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

by H. Anthe Davis

  Were still dying for it. By the reports coming from the trapped soldiers, their alley refuge was getting less safe by the moment. There was nothing she and hers could do; the wraiths had mage-lights hanging over them, and made new ones every time Magus Regna dispelled them. The Trifolders had moved in—some marching, some lowered from the rooftops to reinforce the soldiers directly—and were trying to set their goddess's barriers against the ahergriin, but those could hurt the company's ruengriin as well. And the ruengriin themselves were falling, slowly but surely. They felt no pain and weren't being attacked directly, but no one could stand forever against such sustained battery.

  Her agents and the company archers were still firing into the mob to some effect, and Magus Presh had been brought over to direct his elementals against the wraiths. The lancers' first ride had also helped thin the ranks. And yet the enemies kept coming.

  Abruptly, Izelina broke into the reports. 'Voorkei's made portal contact with Drakisa. Couple new mages are coming in now. They have materials for the teleport-block, he says, but they need transport—they don't wanna fly around with all these wraiths in the air.'

  Ardent grimaced, but said, “Six points, right? I'll send you six agents. The eiyets will be pissy about so many mages in the Shadow, so be careful.” That done, she switched to eiyenriu to give the new orders, mentally running down the number of free agents. Six more with tasks left only a few handfuls on watch.

  “Any idea how long the block will take?” she prompted.

  'Drakisa says...more than a moment, less than a half-mark.'

  “Helpful.”

  A snort from the girl, then nothing. Ardent grimaced; she was letting the tension get to her. She wished she could risk a rashi leaf to ease her nerves, but that would be irresponsible. She could handle this.

  Speaking of irresponsible…

  “Any sign of the captain?” she asked through the eiyets.

  Responses filtered back slowly, all in the negative until one eiyet chirped, 'Alley look-over pebble storm road.'

  An alley near Pebble and Stormline… “What? Why—“

  Then she remembered Linciard's report: the Field Marshal coming their way from Chisel Ridge. Why he didn't take one of his portals straight into the action, she didn't know; maybe he'd rather not get in the midst of it, would rather have a nice evening stroll and hear the sounds of combat from a distance. Either way…

  “Anyone have eyes on the Field Marshal?”

  Scattered chitters, then a stream of negatives on visual confirmation but multiple reports of a bleach-out on Pebble Road, moving northwest past the Sandcastle.

  So he's coming in fast, with wraiths. And the captain is—what? Waiting in ambush?

  Crazy.

  “Linciard, can you get to—“ she started, then cut herself off, frowning. Perhaps it wasn't so crazy.

  'Get to where?'

  “Never mind.”

  'Get to where? Did you find him?'

  She didn't answer. If her mental map was right, it was too late to involve Linciard anyway; Rackmar's crew would be turning the corner onto Stormline any time now, passing Sarovy's position. Sending the lieutenant into the mix—ahorse or not—would just get him dead.

  'Enforcer, did you find him?'

  “Concentrate on your command, lieutenant.”

  'No, pike it, you're meant to share information with us! If you've found the captain, tell me where!'

  “We need you at a solid shadow, lieutenant—“

  'We don't need me! We need him!'

  She couldn't gainsay that. Linciard was the problem child of Blaze Company's command, almost more trouble than he was worth. But Sarovy had some kind of plan, even if he hadn't shared it. He had advantages none of them could duplicate. And no matter how distressed he'd become by his own state, he'd never let it take over—had tried, instead, to learn to use it. To make it just another weapon in his arsenal.

  She didn't know if he'd succeeded, but at this moment she had to trust his judgment.

  She was just opening her mouth to say so when an agent rushed up, out of breath. “Ma'am, ma'am,” she gasped, then bent over, hauling for air.

  “What?” said Ardent, squinting. She knew this woman only vaguely—one of Ticuo's, whom she'd kept back from the Blaze transport because of lingering hostilities.

  Still panting, the black-eyed woman pointed vigorously down the eastern road, which led from Rakut Center toward Old Crown and the rest of the city. “Bleach,” she managed. “Bleach-out.”

  A chill ran up Ardent's spine. She hissed a query to her eiyets, which chirred in agitation—then screeched in chorus as a white flare lit up an alley in that direction just two blocks away. Lit and held: the illumination lingering like a door cracked open into a bright room, then flickering as shapes began passing through.

  Shit.

  “Sergeant Benson!” she shouted, half-turning. “My agents! Mother Matriarch and all Trifolders! We have a piking incursion upon us! Make ready! Draw the line!”

  She glimpsed Benson's blanched look, saw medics rise from their patients and Lark struggle up from her chair. Already more agents were racing to her, some with their shadowmarks bleached by exposure. She repeated the warning quickly to the earhook and the eiyets, then turned her gaze toward that flickering light.

  As reports swarmed her ears and agents assembled at her side, she snapped the peace-guards from her kukris and drew them free.

  *****

  From his place in the alley, Sarovy listened as the Field Marshal's entourage approached. Several of his monsters had already gone ahead to join the fray by the garrison house, but not a single one had glanced at him. Not a single one took him for human.

  Because I'm not, Sarovy thought as he unbuttoned his jacket. He'd glanced out at the oncoming retinue via his fingertips, and he had a plan. No—more of an idea, a hope, a challenge, not something he could be sure was even possible. To change himself…

  The whispers rose inside him at the very idea. Killer, traitor, thief… Resolutely, he ignored them. He'd chosen this path not by their prompting but because it offered an opportunity he couldn't pass up. Rackmar was so near, walking amongst his White Flames and wraiths, surrounded by ahergriin. Unassailable to any force but subterfuge.

  He shrugged free of the dark red jacket and folded it automatically, then dropped it aside. His undershirt followed. Stripping down might not be necessary to the plan, but he didn't want to chance it—didn't want to add extra factors to his concentration. He pulled his boots off as well, and his socks, his swordbelt. His breeches…

  Given the choice between fighting in the nude and failing because of prudery, he shucked them too.

  Bare in the dark, he held his hands out and focused. Immediately his fingers began to thicken and pale, until they were like white gauntlets. The effect traveled down his forearms—then froze, a shudder running through his whole body as the template twinged within him. His fingers shrank back to normal, regaining their coloring and their short-clipped nails. Against his chest, the winged pendant throbbed.

  Fear and relief tangled together. He pushed them both away. The template's continued existence was a good sign, but it would make this ambush difficult.

  Easy enough to circumvent, though. Stooping, he rescued a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and tied it quickly around the pendant, separating it from his skin.

  Immediately the template receded from a detailed model to a mere outline. He felt his throat and mouth fill in, voice squelched, features blurring, and grimaced momentarily with what face he had left. The ghostly voices howled and tugged at him, but he shrugged them off again, held out his arms, and clenched his will.

  Whiteness bloomed across him like fungal growth, annihilating all color and texture. As it bulked out, he felt his inside thinning—his substance redistributing itself to suit his new form. From arms to shoulders, chest and throat, face and legs, his entire surface changed: not to another man, or woman, or ogre or creature, but to the smoot
h, blank façade of a White Flame.

  Pushing his vision into one palm, he lifted it to look himself over. He'd been close enough to the White Flames to know that they were not perfectly uniform; the armor patterns and conformations varied depending on the wearer's shape and preference, from stark and plain to ornate facsimiles of traditional military gear. They could probably extend themselves into far more outlandish forms, but most just embellished on a standard base, and the shape he'd picked appeared suitable. Puffed out and bulked in places as if covering a human body, but defined enough to look like armor rather than surface froth.

  For a moment, the voices surged, and the color and shape of his blank helm flickered. An eye-socket outlined itself, then a nose...

  He gritted his mind against it and saw the faceplate smooth and bleach. This was the struggle: to maintain control of their shared body, to sustain this White Flame façade, and to reach the Field Marshal without falling to pieces. He doubted he had the strength of will or imagination to mimic a real person, but this form was just like wearing armor, if said armor was his skin.

  As he leaned down again, he felt his substance try to flow with gravity, but he concentrated on the memory of natural human motion until that rebellion subsided. Thirty-four years of vigorous exercise and combat training had created its own physical template; as long as he kept telling himself that he had a human body, he could bend, reach, walk, and maybe run by sheer reflex.

  Not fight, but that was why he hadn't tossed away the pendant. Under his false chest-plate, he could feel the handkerchief, feel the thin chain—feel the shape of the wings and the faint throb of the crystal. He could unwrap it easily and take back his shape and name, as soon as the time was right.

  Thick fingers found the broken pieces of his sword and lifted them. For a moment, he stared at the eagle-headed hilt and thought of Senket: his people's parent spirit, the one who had blessed this sword in the hands of the first of the Sarovingian line. The great eagle that had perhaps aided his leap from his dying body into this monstrous new flesh.

  Senket had been kinder to him than the Imperial Light. Had answered his prayer, as the Light never did. Had guarded his lineage for fifteen generations, and might have guarded more. Still, looking down at the etched steel feathers, the sharp beak, the piercing eyes, he could not bring himself to pray again. He was no spiritist. More such people had died to this blade than had ever held it, and he could not ask Senket's forgiveness—not now.

  Perhaps not ever. If there was another Light, a true Light…

  You won't reach it, hissed the voices. You will die. You must die. Set us free, set us free, set us free!

  He schooled himself against physical expressions, against emotions that would show on his façade. There was only his mind, trapped in clay; his soul, chained to these gibbering others. His will, either indomitable or doomed.

  A last glance at the hilt, then he pressed it to his chest and felt his substance part to enfold it. Dozens of internal fingers pulled it in and clasped tight, ready to push it back out at need. He placed the other section of the blade along his left arm and watched the white material split around it, then thread across immediately to close the gap.

  Beyond his alley, the crowd was passing, with the bulky ahergriin on the outside obscuring his view of the Field Marshal and wraiths within. On silent feet, he drifted toward them, blank helm seeking entry, insides still and silent—no anxiety, no doubt.

  Just purpose, as sharp as his hidden blades.

  *****

  “Tell me where he is!” Linciard snapped at the earhook.

  'Busy here. Can't talk.'

  Biting back a harsh reply, Linciard reined in and squinted around. Beneath him, the horse was twitchy, ears twisting in all directions. He wished his senses were as sharp.

  The captain was nearby. He had to be. He'd reported himself heading toward the trapped platoons during the crush, but he'd never reached Vrallek and Arlin—and from his reaction to the Field Marshal's arrival…

  On the earhook, Sergeant Kenner reported his newest attempt to draw ahergriin toward the Washaway Bridge. With luck, the rest of the lancers were there too—on the other side of the conflict from the Field Marshal, whom Linciard had been shadowing since escaping his pursuit.

  Well, technically he'd gotten lost first, this horse too swift for both Rackmar's men and his own sense of the cityscape. But he'd circled around, found the rubble of Chisel Ridge, and reoriented himself by it. Now he and his horse were paralleling the Field Marshal's march from a block away, keeping the glow of their wisp-lights just in sight down the alleyways.

  If the captain was lying in wait for the Field Marshal on this side of the road, he would surely be visible in silhouette. And Linciard had no doubt that was what he was up to. Such strikes were in his nature—fierce, uncompromising, almost vindictive. He remembered the day Sarovy had become their lieutenant, slipping his mercy-blade through the armpit-slot and into the heart of their mutinous old lieutenant right in front of Captain Terrant. He'd never seen such shock on an officer's face, nor such cold determination.

  Linciard knew he could never be like that. He was too sympathetic, too soft. He needed the captain's backbone, his steely heart. Needed someone to follow.

  “Hsst!” said a shadow.

  Linciard glared that way. “Pike off,” he hissed back. “I'm not going. If your boss won't tell me where he is, I'll find him myself.”

  The shadow resolved into Enforcer Ticuo, scowl visible even in the moon-tinged dark. “I'd love to go, you shit-for-brains, since my boss is currently fighting more monsters at Rakut. But no—I owe your stupid ass, so I'm gonna drag it to safety.”

  Linciard eyed him, then squinted past him to the wraith-light down the alley. No human shadows; no sign of the captain. “You don't owe me. I recovered from the kicking and your boss had at you, so—“

  “Not for that. For the wraith thing.”

  “What?”

  Ticuo gave a sound of annoyance and hustled alongside as Linciard kept going. “The wraith thing, the piking portal in the infirmary. You covered me.”

  “So?”

  “You didn't have to.”

  Linciard stared down at him. He wanted to urge the horse up to a canter and get away, keep to his task, but that answer made no sense. “Of course I did.”

  “I wouldn't have.”

  “That's great. Can we—“

  “Why did you?”

  “Because I did, all right?” Linciard snapped, annoyed. “What do you want from me?”

  “I kicked you unconscious. I nearly killed you.”

  “So what? We're allies.”

  “Not willingly.”

  “What's that matter? I don't like you either, but I don't like some of my men and I still watch out for them. What was I gonna do, let you get zapped?”

  “I would've.”

  “Well, you're an ass. Moving on.” He clapped his heels to the horse's sides and shot by, grimacing at Ticuo's shout. Go on, call the monsters to you, he thought, then pike off back to your boss and let me find mine.

  He was just reining in toward the next alley when a dark figure popped out of it to give him the pike-hand. “Go away,” he growled.

  “No,” said Ticuo, and lunged in. The horse shied aside, but not quick enough; the Enforcer caught the reins near its jaw and tried to yank them from Linciard's hands.

  Teeth gritted, Linciard pulled back and kicked at Ticuo's arm, half in mind to draw his sword. “Pike off back to Rakut! If I need help, I'll holler!”

  “I already sent the rest of the crew there, you shit, now come along!”

  “Leave me be! There's no piking debt!”

  “No point in throwing yourself at this either! The mages are setting the teleport-block. Once they do, the Field Marshal and his monsters are all trapped. We can pick them off from the safety of the shadows—or do you piking want to be swarmed?”

  “The captain—“

  “What in Morgwi's name do y
ou think you can do? He's a monster like the rest of 'em. You're just a man.”

  “Shove it up your ass, Ticuo.”

  “I'm serious. What can you do here?”

  Scowling, Linciard lifted the loaded crossbow from where he'd hitched it to the saddlehorn. “Help.”

  The Illanite Enforcer rolled his eyes, then snatched for the crossbow. Linciard hoisted it out of reach just in time. “One bolt?” said Ticuo. “You're gonna help with one bolt?”

  “Two, if you come with me.”

  Ticuo stared at him. “You're a lunatic.”

  “Maybe. But you're not dragging me off. If you have to repay your stupid debt, do it by watching my back.”

  With that, he turned his attention down the new alley. It was still dark, only a ghost of wraith-light limning the far edge like oncoming dawn. In the shadows of ladders and barrels and typical debris, there could yet be a crouching figure…

  By some miracle, Ticuo didn't respond, just stared along with him. Slowly the light strengthened, etching the bricks and throwing nearby objects into relief. Linciard's heart sank in time with the brightening as those potential captain-shadows were dispelled.

  Then the advance halted. Someone shouted, wordless in the distance.

  Linciard looked at Ticuo, who blinked back at him. Then, without comment, he slid from his horse and started down the alley, and the Enforcer fell in behind.

  *****

  Easily, silently, Sarovy blended in with the crowd. These ahergriin didn't quite ignore him; rather, they deferred to him like they did to the White Flames, allowing him a thin envelope of clear space in which to move. Step by step, he merged toward the center, taking in the other White Flames peripherally even as he sought Rackmar's back. If they found his presence or figure unusual, they didn't react to it, their blank faceplates never turning. They were somewhat different than he remembered, each bearing a faint red spiderweb-tracery on their armor, but so long as they were indifferent to him, he could reserve his attention for his prey.