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

by H. Anthe Davis

  Who was by no means hidden. Field Marshal Rackmar occupied the center of the formation, head bare and stride steady, glancing aside now and then to comment or respond to one of his close aides. Among those, Sarovy recognized Savaad Rallant, kitted up in infantry armor over a white gambeson, a black sword at his side. Unlike the Field Marshal, the senvraka actually wore his helm, and seemed to be scanning the buildings they passed; all the others, wraith and White Flame and ahergriin alike, were focused down the road toward their target.

  Sarovy fixed his gaze on the nape of Rackmar's neck and closed down all peripheral vision. In his chest, the hilt of his sword bobbed forward, but he pushed it back; he still had a few yards to close, more White Flames to slide between, before he could shove his blade into that madman's skull. There were wards on him, no doubt—and likely better ones than he was used to—but if he was swift and sure and brutal, he thought he could beat through them before retaliation came.

  He had to.

  Die, the souls whispered. Fall and die and be free.

  With every step, they became harder to control. He could feel their anger and anguish eroding the fringes of his will, nipping away little pieces as he fought to suppress them. They couldn't overwhelm him—he was sure of that—but they could fracture his concentration enough to make him lose his shape, lose the initiative, and then they'd have what they wanted.

  Not yet, he thought at them, his vision a dark tunnel with Rackmar's skull at the end. We are kin in suffering, no matter that I hold the reins. We were sacrificed to the same lying god, made tools in his servants' hands. The man before me now is the greatest and most malevolent of those servants, the one who would have condemned the entire Empire to what we endured. We cannot die while he yet lives. I will end him. Help me.

  The whispers ebbed, and for a moment he thought he'd gotten through to them. But then the nipping began again, like a million tiny teeth, and he banished them to the back of his mind. If they wouldn't assist, he couldn't spare them the attention.

  Another ahergriin shifted aside for him, the fingers that spotted its mangy flank waving like cilia as he brushed by. Revulsion made him glance at it, just briefly: its body might have belonged to a bear once, but the head was gone, the fore-limbs split and spliced at the elbow-joint to support four human hands each. Two served as its paws, the others curled back as if waiting to strike—the nails all several inches long.

  How many faithful pilgrims did it contain? How many tormented prisoners? From what he knew, the ahergriin were not 'made', not like him—just conglomerated from the byproducts of the conversion process. The Palace slaughter.

  Perhaps that was over now. Gone along with the Light.

  Or perhaps Rackmar would restart it somehow. Perhaps those red spiderwebs meant he already had.

  He knew he should try to mimic their appearance, but it was difficult enough to maintain this form without adding detail. His flesh wanted to return to either his Sarovy form or the grey of its base state, that nightmarish creature he'd seen so long ago at camp.

  Soon, he told himself. Very soon.

  He passed another White Flame and glimpsed its helm turn toward him. Automatically he rechecked his shape, then focused forward as if unconcerned. There were only two White Flames left between him and Rackmar, the distance down to a swift lunge, and if his sword had been whole, he might have taken the gamble right then.

  Instead, he upped his pace to push between the two, and saw both of them glance at him and one of the wraiths look over as if called. None made a sound, so with Rackmar's back only steps away, he thought, Fall or fly.

  Lurching forward, he drew the broken sword from his chest, and thrust—

  Cutting thin air as Rackmar stepped aside.

  A gauntlet came around to strike him backhanded across his blank face. He didn't reel—barely even felt it as his sight bent around the impact, clay-like flesh reforming immediately. His grip on the whiteness slipped, neutral grey rushing across his surface like a tide, but he stabbed again without concern, feeling the whispers rise as his arm lengthened and loosened.

  Rackmar avoided it with unnatural ease and dealt him another vision-flattening punch to the head. As his face rebounded, he saw the light in Rackmar's left eye, red as blood, and the white-thread stitchery along his cheek, the armor creeping up from under his collar.

  All around them, the entourage stood frozen, fibrous blades extending from bodyguards' hands, brilliant light gathering between wraith-fingers. Rallant, startled behind his helm, took a step back and started to draw that black sword, saying, “Sir—“

  Rackmar held up his hand for silence.

  “And what is this?” he said, grinning through the tattered dark forest of his beard. “I saw you in my visions just now, challenging me, assaulting me, but I don't know who you are. Do you?”

  Visions, he thought. That red eye throbbed with the same erratic radiance as the White Flames' webs, and more traces showed in the Field Marshal's armor as it molded itself to the back of his head. Whatever he'd done to them, he'd done to himself as well—but what it meant…

  It didn't matter. He'd lost the element of surprise. Now it was down to ferocity.

  Driving forward, he struck for that heavy-featured face, success demanding he puncture that sneer and lance steel into that brain. Rackmar tried to bat his stab aside, but he'd let loose the reins on his true form, his limbs boneless and malleable; it was a matter of monstrous instinct to slip beneath that impact and restraighten his bent arm, to follow through with all his strength.

  A white pane flared before Rackmar's face, dissipating the energy of the strike. At the same time, the other gauntleted fist slammed into Sarovy's neck, indenting it enough to bring his pendant's chain to the surface.

  Inside, the handkerchief slid. Grey substance made contact with metal wings. The template clamped over him—incompletely, just his head and sword-arm—but he jerked back in shock as his vision recentered in his eyes, his throat clearing of its former blockage.

  “Ah, you,” said Rackmar, pausing. His dark eyes flicked over Sarovy's mishmash shape contemptuously. “I should have known: the last sarisigi still clinging to an identity. Enkhaelen's little project and pet. Where is he?”

  Sarovy glanced to each side. The White Flames and wraiths had withdrawn, seemingly content to let this confrontation run its course; the ahergriin had simply halted in their tracks, indifferent. Only Rallant stood near, gaze flicking from the Field Marshal to his former captain, hand clenched tight on his akarriden blade's hilt.

  Is this to be a private duel? he wondered. If so, he doubted it would stay that way. The moment he broke that protective ward, Rackmar's cronies would jump in. He didn't think the White Flames could hurt him any more than he could hurt them, but the wraiths…

  Keep him talking. As long as he talks, his armor stays incomplete, and I still have an opening.

  Inside, he adjusted the handkerchief and felt more of his substance touch the pendant. His fractured template flowed down his right side and across his chest, etching lungs into the clay.

  “Enkhaelen?” he rasped. “I haven't seen him.”

  Rackmar snorted his disdain and extended his right hand. White threads reached out from the gaps in his gauntlet, weaving themselves into a sword that pulsed with the same red veins as his eye. “You lie. We know you do his bidding, and that he values you somehow. We've pushed you into a corner to make sure he will come. Where is his portal? At one of your other rally points? My forces are destroying them now—doing away with all your little traitors and heathens. Tell me where he's hiding and perhaps I'll turn a blind eye to those who flee.”

  “He is not here.”

  “Come now, what reason have you to protect him? He made you what you are—subjected you and so many others to his deliberately flawed conversion process. My plan, my White Flames, are far superior to his designs, far more humane. We can all ascend at the side of the Imperial Light, no comrade left behind.”

  Sarov
y stared at him and that throbbing red eye. He knew in his soul that the Light which had reshaped him was gone. What Rackmar worshiped now, he couldn't guess.

  “I am not here to compare atrocities,” he rasped, easing forward. Under his ropy skin, he was tense—ready for the next lunge, the next strike. The chatter in his head kept surging and ebbing, but with his template half-engaged, it was just a background roar, like surf.

  “You just want me dead, hm?” Rackmar chuckled, a low glottal sound made worse by the red pulse that ran up his armored throat. “Don't care about your precious men being torn apart, your so-called allies ravaged by my beasts? Your Shadow lady torn limb from limb for the sake of your exalted Maker?”

  Abruptly, Sarovy realized why he had judged this so wrong. It wasn't that his team had been compromised—because that had been true from the start, from Scout Telren and Rallant to Colonel Wreth and Messenger Cortine. Nor was it that Blaze Company had suddenly become important or threatening to Rackmar's plans, because they hadn't.

  It was Enkhaelen. This was a proxy grudge-match between the Archmagus and the Field Marshal, and if the Archmagus hadn't contacted them, they would never have been attacked.

  “If he were here, I would fling him at your feet,” he growled. It was the truth. Let the madmen fight it out, here in the ruins of their ambitions. Let them be the ones to suffer.

  Rackmar snorted and gestured with his fibrous sword, mouth opening to repeat the question.

  Sarovy lunged.

  His broken blade struck the barrier before Rackmar's face, cracks shooting out across its pale pane. An instant later, his offhand swept in, the hidden sword-tip driving into and through one of the cracks. It cut a shallow line above Rackmar's lip as the man lurched back, but Sarovy followed him, striking again and again with his truncated weapons, one arm like whipcord and the other white-knuckled.

  They glanced off the ward, then from Rackmar's armor as it rushed up to protect him. To either side, the wraiths stretched out their hands, pale sparks rising—whether to shape a new ward or attack with arcane fire, Sarovy didn't care. He just kept striking, relentless, even as the armor sealed over Rackmar's chin and mouth, the last of him to go.

  The Field Marshal's white sword struck him at awkward angles, useless against his reformative flesh. He kept close no matter how his foe retreated, ignoring the convergence of White Flames at his back—infuriated by the seamless perfection of the white armor, his loss of any opening. He couldn't run, couldn't break through, couldn't win.

  Die! screamed the ghosts inside. For an instant, they wrenched control of his offhand, making it split down the middle and drop the half-blade. He swung his concentration there and they wrenched at his pendant, thrusting it to the surface still half-wrapped in its handkerchief. He lost contact with one of the wings, which had preserved his good hand.

  The hilt slipped through his fingers.

  White blades struck him from behind, driving through his substance and out his chest. Cords of burning energy captured his limbs, making the clay-stuff smoke and fuse. For the first time in recent memory, he felt something like pain. Not quite it; more of a tension, a restriction, a crawling fire, but close enough to know he was in danger.

  He tried to pull away but couldn't. The places where the cords touched refused to move, and the white blades had split inside him, pervading his substance and splaying net-like across his surface. He could extricate himself from them, but it would take effort, concentration.

  And Rackmar loomed above, helm-fibers separating at the mouth to reveal his tooth-baring grin. Thread-sword already unwoven, he latched one gauntleted hand across Sarovy's face and spread the other before him, bloody light seeping out through the gaps in the mail. “Too bad, captain,” he growled through the white lace, his new eye gleaming dully beneath its many protective layers. “You chose the wrong side. I could have made good use of you—far better than your service as a human. But it's too late now. Any last words?”

  Sarovy still had his lungs, his throat, his face, but all the rest had subsided into shapelessness. The pendant's chain cut at his neck like a wire. Inside, the ghosts were a shrieking chorus, battering against his consciousness as if they had to go through him to escape, while the fire of the wraiths' spells had spread from his arms to his shoulders.

  We will die, he told those voices, surprised at his own calm. We will be free. But we have one thing yet to achieve. Vengeance.

  Vengeance, they echoed. Vengeance. Vengeance.

  Rackmar still watched him, blood-radiant fingers outstretched before his face, ready to burn him like the wraith-fire and release him from this foul flesh. As the voices surged within him, he felt the last of his fear dissipate—felt a tickle as thin metal sliced through his throat, his vocal cords reconnecting behind it as the chain slipped free.

  Only the crystal remained in contact with his flesh, pinched just slightly between its grey folds. Looking up into Rackmar's eyes, he rasped, “I commend my soul to the true Light.”

  Then he let it fall, and surged forth as the template vanished: all clay, all wrath, snapping away from the captive parts of himself to swarm up the Field Marshal's arm and chest. To his neck, to his jaw—to his mouth as the white fibers rushed to stitch it shut, thin grey rivulets forcing themselves through with a cry of Vengeance, vengeance!

  Red fire clamped around him then, and white. They tore sensation from him, and vision, and the voices one by one, until he was alone in the bloody flames, not in pain but burning all the same. Evaporating, dissipating like so much smoke—a remnant of a life long-lost yet just now ended.

  He grasped for himself, but there was nothing left to hold.

  Except—

  *****

  They'd gone in through an unlocked alley door, the alley-mouth itself not close enough to the action to see anything but ahergriin. Crossbows ready, they'd eased through dark, dusty chambers to a front room slatted with wraith-light, and opened the glass panes and shutters just enough to take aim.

  Now they stared as the clay creature surged up to strike at Rackmar, its grey substance going molten as the wraiths and White Flames poured their power into it. Rackmar wrenched away, scraping at his face with gauntleted hands, and the stuff followed with murderous ferocity until even its furthest tendrils flared with light and slowed, then stopped.

  For a long moment, the only sounds were Rackmar's coughing and the tick of the substance as it cooled. In the wraith-light, it looked like murky glass, no longer humanoid at all.

  Then Rackmar raised his fist and brought it down viciously on the figure. Cracks shot through it, releasing still-molten material from its core like pallid blood; uncaring, Rackmar struck it again, and again, and again, until Linciard could see it no more, only hear the patter of shards on the ground.

  Sucking in a breath, Linciard raised his crossbow. He couldn't allow himself to think about what he'd seen, not yet. Rackmar's armor was peeling back from his face to show his sneer of contempt, and there might not be another chance—

  A glint of light caught his eye, too close.

  He glanced to it, registered the white mask and white gloves aimed at their windows, and froze. For an instant, two paths split before him: the trigger or life.

  Then he flung himself into Ticuo and kept going, driving the startled Enforcer away from the other window and toward the darkened wall. Even before they reached it, he saw the shadows move—recoiling from the dual flares that blasted through the shutters. In desperation, he shoved Ticuo through the last patch of darkness, into the waiting Realm.

  Then light erupted at his back, the twin shockwaves slamming him against the now-solid wall. He lost his grip on the crossbow and, momentarily, the world. At the window, something horrible scrabbled to get in, providing impetus to gain his feet and stumble toward the door. Through it was a hall, another room, an entryway, the alley—and his horse, still waiting down the other side. He just had to reach his horse.

  Another bolt of light blew through the
window and burst in the hall just as he ducked through. It knocked him flat, and for a time he couldn't remember which way was up, the building reeling about him like a fever-dream.

  Finally, ears ringing, he dragged himself upright and stumbled onward. Here was the side room, here the entryway, here the door…

  He pushed through it into a wash of light, then tried to retreat but felt something slap into place behind him, bright and smooth—a ward. Another sprang up to his right, forcing him to turn toward the alley-mouth. Inhuman shapes had gathered there, some robed, some hunched and hideous, and among them…

  Sav.

  That sweet scent struck him, wiping out all thought.

  *****

  “Come here,” said Savaad Rallant, and was gratified when Linciard obeyed. If he hadn't…

  A wraith raised its hand, radiant even through its glove. “Don't,” he told it testily. “This one is my thrall. He will be useful to us. See? Even the ahergriin recognize it.”

  Indeed the monstrosities, which a moment before had been slavering and growling, had halted with sensory nodes tilted in question or else were retreating back to their positions. Rallant suppressed his relief; it wouldn't do to let anyone know how unsure he'd been, but it seemed they could smell the venom in Linciard just as he did.

  The wraith's eye-lights fixed on him for a long, inscrutable moment. Then it shrugged its hidden shoulders, emitted a song-like note, and turned away to rejoin the entourage.

  “What have you found?” rasped the Field Marshal from the center.

  Rallant grimaced. As pleased as he was to see Linciard alive, this was a bad situation for both of them.

  As Linciard came close, he reached out to touch the man's slack cheek and stare into those dilated eyes. No reaction, no resistance—not yet. Casually, faux-affectionately, he slid his fingers up to the man's ear, and palmed the thin silver object from behind it.