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

by H. Anthe Davis

  Others began to emerge from the buildings around them, and Linciard recognized Presh as he rushed through the groaning mob to assist with Mako. This was Rakut Center, then—on the other side of the city from the Shadow complex and the rest of their men at Riverwatch.

  Glancing to Ticuo, he lowered his end of the litter and said, “Get her some help.” Then he rose and started for Ardent and Presh, Lieutenant Sengith stumbling along at his side.

  *****

  Lark felt Tanvolthene's loss like a stab through her skull, magnified by the pain and rage of Mako's reaction. It pushed her onward, toward the sense of conflict below, and she had a moment to reflect that only months ago, she'd have been running the other way.

  Then the wall beside her cracked, big chunks of concrete falling away from the buckling stone behind it. From nearby came a roar of collapse as some large chamber gave way; dust flooded into the hall she'd been headed for, another great tear opening in its ceiling to drop shards by the handful.

  Terror locked around her heart. Pike me, that's where the ramp was.

  She tried to turn back, but saw dust trickling down from new fissures there as well. Above her, tons of rock and concrete groaned like dying beasts, just waiting for their time to crash. The hairs on her neck went up, the entrapment-nightmare striking again. Only Maevor's wrist in her grip kept her lucid.

  Another crack! resounded from directly above, and she flinched back as a shard the size of her fist dropped—then rebounded off the orange flare of her ward. Its light awakened her like a slap, and she grabbed at the crystal on its cord while backing away from the growing rift.

  “Vallindas,” she hissed. The wraith responded immediately, its gold-violet essence swirling out to cloak her. She pulled Maevor close and said, “Him too. If you can get us out of here—it doesn't matter how, I just—“

  'The Grey is out of reach,' it intoned in her ears. 'We are in the depths, and I cannot see it. Nor can I unfurl even if I were to possess you. The earth presses upon me too heavily.'

  Her breath hitched. “There has to be something. Our gestalt—can you feel the connection? I can't be more than a floor away from Mako. If I could just get there...”

  'It is a facet of your bestial nature. I cannot share it.'

  “Just—something, anything!”

  'In here, I am only energy, blind and senseless. You are the whole of my world.'

  “Shitty time for you to say that!” she shouted, panic making her shrill. More small chunks pattered off her ward, not enough to drain it but certainly to terrify her. Down another hall came the rumble of a new collapse, its shudder propagating cracks ever further through the walls around her.

  “We're piked,” she said. “There's no way out, the Shadows are gone—I can't do anything! I'm not good enough! Mako! Mako!” Even with it reverberating through the gestalt, she received no answer—just a blocked-off knot of silence, a concentration so complete she couldn't penetrate it. Terror insisted she stab at it, scratch and claw and bite until it responded to her, but she knew she couldn't; she and Maevor were just two, and those below were so many.

  Another shudder went through the hall, even worse. She shoved Maevor the way they'd come as a huge seam opened up in the ceiling ahead, the riven concrete hanging in its net of crossbeams a bare moment before it all collapsed. Debris pummeled at her ward but she kept pushing, dragging, stumbling away as dust swarmed around her, making her cough hard and squint her eyes nearly shut.

  There was no safe place. Before her feet, a chasm opened; above her, rock grated and crunched. Whimpering, she pulled Maevor down with her and hugged him like a doll. His eyes were empty, fingers loose in her grip; with luck, he wouldn't feel it.

  'Why do you not make a new ward?' said the wraith.

  “It won't help, this is too much—“

  'Alone, you have not the strength to withstand this. But you are not alone. Your Warder showed you the form—the wedge? Use it. Draw upon me. I will support you.'

  A wedge… She remembered it, but Tanvolthene had introduced it as a way to push through crowds or divert assaults, divide strong winds. She couldn't see how it would help here.

  Unless…

  She could turn it point-upright like a pyramid, to redirect the force of the falling rock and create a shelter. But what if the floor buckled? What if she was driven down so far that no air reached her, no help? Was it worse to be crushed or suffocated?

  Neither, she told herself. It's worse to give up.

  Fixing the wedge-ward in her mind, she forced it outward pane by pane: three to protect her from above and the fourth beneath her knees. Tanvolthene had said a true Warder could absorb impacts and channel them back into the wards—but she didn't know how, hadn't studied with him enough. There had been too much work to do with the goblins, her remaining Bah-kai fellows, Mako, Presh, Enforcer Ardent…

  Nevertheless, as the panes clicked into place, she felt Vallindas' energy surge over her skin to reinforce them. The air inside the ward filled with golden sparks, making her teeth ache and filling her sinuses with the scent of lightning. In her lap, Maevor twitched as the sparks touched him; she looked down to see his pupils shrink back to normal, see him blink.

  Then the ceiling caved in.

  *****

  A dull roar reached Sarovy's ears as he surmounted the last step. The ground rolled beneath his feet, a quake-like shudder more distant and yet larger than what he'd felt during the Shadowland crush.

  A similar quake went through his soul. Voices babbled in the earhook, but he couldn't comprehend them; everything had gone foreign, even the earnest aid of his Shadow escort an unintelligible jabber. The world was a black tunnel ending in a door, and he thrust himself through it into night-swept streets under a sky veiled by dust and smoke. A new tremor came—real or spiritual, he couldn't tell—and through the cloaking miasma he glimpsed radiant shapes: white, green, burgundy, directing their blinding energies downward. More spread out beyond them, and more, and more, bent on demolishing an area at least five times the size of the Shadowland.

  He was at the crest of a rise, looking down upon their work from among craft-yards and shops and merchant offices. Behind him was the road that led to the Riverwatch post—to the rest of his men and their continued assault—but ahead was…

  Beneath that rubble was…

  Failure. Killer. Fool. Traitor. The voices were clear now, and he knew with a visceral jolt that the mind-wards Mako had maintained upon him were broken. His hand rose toward the winged-light pendant, then halted. If the repairs on it had failed as well…

  Monster. Murderer. Madman. Coward.

  “No,” he mumbled. “No, no, no, no, no.”

  Madman, thinking you could stand against your masters. Traitor, leading your men to the slaughter. Murderer, bloody-handed, unclean, unforgiven. Monster, built from the bones of your victims.

  He clenched his teeth against a new denial. They were right; he was all those things, and he'd been absent when his men most needed him. He'd brought them here, condemning them as thoroughly as his predecessor in this body had condemned these souls.

  Failure, all those lives slipping through your fingers. Fool, imagining you could handle any threat. Killer, born of killers, perpetuating death and destruction to no purpose.

  Coward. Coward. Coward. Coward.

  He clenched his hand on the hilt of the heirloom sword. Ardent had offered him many new weapons, but he hadn't had the heart to pick one, not yet. He'd been unable to let go of this memento, and now it was all he had.

  What have I done? he thought through the chanting swarm. What do I do now?

  No answers from them, only taunts and jeers and screams. Men, women, even children—he saw their faces in his mind's eye, warped by terror and agony, dissolving into his abominable flesh only to reform in the mirror of his thoughts. Clawing at him with his own hands until the illusion tore away and there was only greyness beneath his nails, only clay. No flesh, no blood. Nothing remotely human.<
br />
  'Captain?'

  He flinched from that word. It didn't belong. It wasn't him, wasn't deserved. Too many had called him that and died—killed by enemies who could have been friends, by allies that had used him, and by his own hand: Serinel, loyal and fierce, that fine soul slipping through his fingers. How many more lay beneath Chisel Ridge, lost forever?

  'Captain? Captain Sarovy, hoi!'

  Linciard…?

  'Zeli says you're there, she can feel you. Are you all right? Captain? We're at Rakut right now, not sure what to do. Scryer Mako is down, passed out. I can get us on the way to Riverwatch, but if you have a better idea… Hoi! Answer!'

  Linciard? I... He realized he hadn't cued the hook, hadn't spoken, and suddenly couldn't remember how to do either. Panic washed against him like a dark tide.

  No. I am...Sarovy. I am the captain. I was human and a part of me still is. I can breathe. I can speak. I will not surrender to this.

  Despite the jeers of his fellow souls, he forced breath into the spaces that mimicked lungs. He stretched his jaw and curled his tongue and focused on the words, the intent—not the act of speaking but how it felt to be heard, to be understood clearly. Then he cued the earhook.

  “Linciard,” he managed slowly and deliberately, turning away from the gleam of the wraiths' work, toward Riverwatch. “I'm headed to join them now. If you have enough Shadow agents to take you there, go. And contact that Gejaran—Drakisa. We've never needed reinforcements more than now.”

  'On it, sir. Be careful. There's monsters everywhere.'

  Yes, he thought. There are.

  Chapter 28 – Red On Red

  Savaad Rallant stood before his commander in little more than an infirmary robe, a sword-belt and slippers, struggling to compose his face. The scry-mirror on the bedside table showed an aerial view of what had been Chisel Ridge half a mark ago—now a smouldering crater overseen by wraiths.

  “You saw no sign of him?” the Field Marshal prompted. He looked aggravated, his reddish crystalline eye glowing in brighter counterpoint to the harsh gleam in his good one. Though he wore his battle-armor, the enamel scarred in places from prior wars, he'd made no move to leave the infirmary yet. It seemed to be his new command-post.

  Rallant wondered how he could get anything done here, what with the rows of men groaning and writhing at whatever sensory agony the crystals were inflicting upon them. At a glance he could see dozens of White Flames, the tendrils of their armor undulating around the inset shards, but also common soldiers and civilians with wounds deliberately opened in their chests then sewn back together around glowing splinters.

  Other White Flames stood guard around the place, prepared to move on any subject that broke free of the straps. They all bore the same reddish glow within their fibrous substance, which sent spiderwebs of bloody energy along the threads whenever they moved.

  Right now he and Rackmar, the wraith Caernahon, and an odd, tall woman in a green dress all stood at the bedside of Enlightened Messenger Cortine, who'd been stripped and strapped down tight. Nude, the Messenger was a startling sight: the skin on his forearms, thighs, groin and mid-chest gone, the genitals also excised. White fibers covered those areas like thin spiderwebs, mere fractions of what Palace material must have originally been there; his empty eye-sockets likewise retained only traces of the threads that had formed his eyes and interlaced with the nerves beyond.

  Rallant had heard that the White Flame priesthood mutilated themselves to prevent temptation, but he'd always shrugged it off as rumor. The confirmation sickened him.

  “Agent!” the Field Marshal snapped.

  Rallant wrenched his gaze back to his commander and bowed his head in apology. “No, sir, I saw no sign of the Archmagus. I only know of his contact because of my thrall, and he could tell me no more than that it was made.”

  The Field Marshal bared his teeth, but not at Rallant. His gaze had gone elsewhere, fixed on some distant enemy. “You've told me nothing my other agents haven't. Your thrall, then—where is he?”

  Rallant opened his mouth to say 'in that ruin you've just made', but thought better of it. Though he'd never worked with the Field Marshal directly, he knew the man's reputation—and that he'd never keep the bitterness from his voice. “I don't know, sir,” he said instead. “I was not privy to the company's plans.”

  “But he has some rank, yes?”

  “A lieutenant, sir.”

  “Good.” Rackmar gestured one gauntleted hand toward the infirmary door. “Go get suited up. I'll have you advise me on the field, and perhaps make use of your talents. I want to interrogate these Blaze men, uncover their connections to that festering nuisance Enkhaelen—and if their fall brings him in, so much the better.”

  Rallant blinked. “Sir, you mean to go to Bahlaer?”

  The Field Marshal's mismatched gaze fixed on Rallant, near-black and burning red. “Naturally. It has been some time since I've overseen the cleansing of a city. I will enjoy this one, Dark-infested as it is.”

  Questions swarmed him, but he dared not ask them. He'd seen the mobs of ahergriin on his way over from the mages' dome, corralled in the yard nearby and waiting for their turn to be sent into the fray. The little ones were uncountable, but he guessed the number of ogre-sized ones at perhaps a hundred, plus several hundred more of the man-sized. With wraiths and mages also on the army's side and half of Blaze Company buried in rubble, he couldn't imagine how Bahlaer could put up a fight.

  Didn't want to see it, either. Bad enough that he'd been within spitting range of Linciard at the end.

  Should have brought him with me, not left him to die.

  But he'd balked at thralling the man, even temporarily. He could have done it half a dozen times since their first ward-free meeting, but the thought had been too unpleasant. He'd had bad experiences with thralls in the past, and he'd liked Linciard—Erolan. He hadn't wanted to turn him into some servile pet.

  So now he was dead, buried along with the rest of his comrades. Perhaps it was for the best. It would have destroyed Linciard to be used against his own men, and without his presence, Rallant had no care for the city.

  “As you say, sir,” he replied, bowing his head again. “I don't suppose I have time for a wash? I'm filthy.”

  The Field Marshal snorted. “Give your gear sizes to an attendant, get to your new room and prepare yourself. I expect to see you at the portal chamber in half a mark. Dismissed.”

  Rallant drew up in salute, then backed off as the Field Marshal turned away. One of the White Flames beckoned to him, and he moved automatically to follow it—so difficult to think of them as people in that armor. At his hip, the akarriden blade seethed in its smoked glass sheath, the only thing its acid wouldn't eat through. He set a hand on the hilt and felt its ire quell temporarily.

  We are alike, he thought to its dim sour presence in his mind. Too much danger contained in too fragile a shell. Best we stick to the battlefield and leave all else behind.

  This wasn't the first lover he'd killed. The pain would go away in time.

  *****

  “I'll go to Bahlaer as well,” Mariss asserted as the blond man was led off. “If my father might be there, it's my—“

  “No.”

  She glared at the Field Marshal, who didn't bother to look at her. “'No'? You can't tell me no! He's my father, my target—my destiny! I will tear the Ravager from him and see him weep bloody tears at my feet!”

  With infuriating calm, Rackmar looked to Caernahon and said, “Remove the witch from my sight.”

  “Witch? You festering lump of bear-fat, I'll—“

  “Mariss, my dear. Please,” Caernahon intoned too sweetly, the way he did when he was trying to embarrass her with her own unchecked anger. Not that she cared. The rage inside her had been at near-boil for over a week now—ever since she'd left her father there on the mountainside, insensate. Ever since the wards of Gejara had cut off her splinter-based scry; ever since she had reconnected with it only to see end
less grasslands and no sign of either her father or that stupid boy who'd carried the Guardian.

  She wanted to scream and howl and fling the little side-tables around until either her wishes were fulfilled or the inferno of fury petered out. The only thing that held her in check was Master Caernahon's cold gaze, and with it the knowledge that he could exile her back to Hlacaasteia at any time.

  No he can't, hissed her defiance. I am a potent mage and decades past being a child. I can leave at any time, and he can't stop me. The way he's wrapped up in these experiments, he won't even notice I'm gone.

  But that wouldn't get her any closer to her father. She'd prowled the camp quite a bit out of boredom, but the mages had always barred her from their area. Army protocol, they'd said, but she was sure it was because of the Field Marshal and his ridiculous problem with women. The only women she'd seen near him were those white-clad bodyguards, and never both at once, nor did he pay them any heed. He had few female mages on staff, no female attendants, and ignored the few female soldiers entirely; he'd even had the female refugees separated from the men and children and placed at the limit of the camp.

  She'd complained to Master Caernahon before, but he'd just told her to keep quiet and out of the Field Marshal's way—as if his stupid preference took precedence over her revenge. It made her hate them both so fiercely that her skull ached from it.

  “I'll be outside,” she spat, and wheeled about before she could say anything worse. In her mind's eye, she slashed her way through the White Flame guards with her green crystal blade; in reality she just stormed past them, head high, hands fisted, and gave no acknowledgment even when one held open the door.