Scattered throughout the gathering were short, broad-bodied, flat-faced people with striated skin and eyes like garnets. As Cob hesitated, heads turned, and the short people stood respectfully, their shale-like layered clothing clacking with their movements.
Cob couldn't help it. He froze.
A part of him scoffed. They were here to meet the Guardian; his Stag-ancestor's fear had no reason to rear its antlered head. But logic meant nothing to it. So many people, so many predators—
The wolf-folk glanced past him to his friends, showing their teeth in disdain, and a spasm of anger broke the paralysis.
That's right. This isn't about me. It's about gaining knowledge and keeping my friends alive. And I can do that. I could crush these wolves in my rocky fist, but I won't, because we all want the same thing. We have to.
At his side, he thought he saw Haurah smile.
“Friends,” he said loudly, because that was what he needed them to be. “I'm glad you've come. I need advice.”
With that, he strode through the gap toward the rocky slope on the far side, where a few big slabs sprawled like fallen altars of old gods. Wolves leaned out to sniff at him, and the stony people reached with their spade-like hands to brush his armor, but he ignored them, hoping they'd give his friends more space.
Reaching the slope, he clambered up the loose scree and surmounted one of the slabs. His black stone hooves adhered to it easily; with the Guardian awake, nothing short of the Ravager could knock him off a rock.
From that vantage, he found himself above all the crowd but the owl-folk, who watched with inscrutable sharpness. His friends split around the slab to rest in two groups, all close on the slope: Lark and Fiora on the left, Arik and Ilshenrir and Dasira on the right. He wondered if they'd discussed it—if they'd thought this was safest. Humans on one side, outcasts on the other.
Marshaling his thoughts, he said, “First, does everyone here speak Imperial? I don't want to be misunderstood.”
The wolf-woman Ressah, who had been joined by a wolf-man and now stood a cautious distance down-slope, said, “No, Guardian, nor is it the most comfortable tongue for us. But we can all speak or understand Thiolanc, if it pleases you.”
'The wolf-tongue,' said Haurah. He flicked a look at her, then blinked when he spotted the other Guardians arrayed around the slab, among his friends.
Can you translate again? he thought.
'Easily. Simply speak, and it will be as if you are a wolf.'
“Then I speak your tongue so you know my will,” he said aloud, and was less surprised by the clacks and yips that came from his mouth than by the simplification of his words. “I am the Guardian Ko Vrin. These of my pack are under my protection, and you will not harm them. You will also listen to them, for they are wise in things beyond the forest. The quillwolf will speak for them and you will not interrupt him. Understand?”
A rumble of assent went through the crowd. Cob glanced to Arik and said, in Imperial, “You all right wi' that? Bein' everyone's voice?”
The big man stared at him with flattened ears, but nodded.
Returning his attention forward, Cob said, “Now, I am hungry.”
A ripple of laughter went through the crowd, and he blushed; he'd meant to mention food, not demand it. He could feel the ground through his stone-shod feet, though, and beyond it the gathered people: hungry and nervy and uncertain themselves. As the hog-folk began pulling pots and pans off the bonfire, the general mood shifted toward anticipation. Much better.
Below, Ressah and the male retreated to their pack, and he watched as they held a whuffed conversation then traded an odd packet up to the front. Ressah sniffed it, then nodded to her kin and skittered up to the slab to present it from a cringing posture.
Cob crouched down, puzzled. In the waning light, it took a moment for him to recognize it as a cut of meat wrapped in skin.
“For the quillwolf, if you approve, Guardian,” said Ressah, still quailing as if expecting a blow. “In deference to your blood and the Gnashed Tusk, we took neither deer nor hog but goat.”
Cob frowned at the implication that he might be violently offended by venison. Back in Kerrindryr, the villagers had considered the local deer too sacred to hunt, but that hadn't stopped him from eating it when it was available—mainly scraps while he was enslaved at the quarry. It wasn't cannibalism. The Stag was dead, permanently dividing its animal descendants from the humans that bore its blood.
But if avoiding it made the wolves feel better, that was fine.
“It's acceptable,” he said, and watched as she turned toward Arik. The big skinchanger had donned his chiton again and stood as if guarding Dasira and Ilshenrir, but as Ressah approached, his ears flattened and his tail tucked. By the time she was close enough to present the meat, they had both hunched defensively, the fur on their shoulders half-hackled.
The meat changed hands, then Ressah backed away.
“Thank you,” Cob told her. She glanced to him and inclined her head, ears settling back to a calm position, and at the breaking of the stare the pack behind her seemed to exhale a common breath. Hackles smoothed, gazes turned away, and even Arik relaxed his stance.
'Not bad, for a Stag,' said Haurah. He glanced over to find her crouched beside him, smiling without showing teeth. With her dark hair spilling over one fur-trimmed shoulder and the late light in her slanted eyes, she looked exotic and feral—and very close. Had she been real, he would have felt her breath.
He looked away quickly.
Might work better if you advised me during the situation instead of commenting after, he thought, then cursed himself for how sulky his inner voice sounded.
'And how would you learn, if we did it all for you?'
That why you didn't join me in the spar?
'Yes. We can not carry you. You must learn to use your own feet—to dance. All life is a dance: hunt and flee, mate and part, endless convergence and separation. We can not know each other until we have tangled and unwound.'
Cob reddened. Hearing this advice in Haurah's husky voice was not helpful. But she looked away as she spoke, and he saw no teasing in her face but something wild and sad.
At a loss for words, he glanced to the crowd and saw two hog-folk approaching. He straightened and tried to regain some semblance of the Guardian face.
Both easily topped eight feet in height, their large heads planted squarely between heavy shoulders with only the merest suggestion of neck. They wore the armor-like garb from earlier, but now, closer, he realized they were not as covered as he had thought; some of the patches that had seemed like rough-worked leather were in fact their own thick skin, marked with whorls of paint. Far heavier in the upper body than in the gut or almost-delicate legs, they walked as if at any moment they might fall to all fours. Strings of beads and old, yellowed tusks adorned them like chains of rank.
What boggled Cob was the marginally smaller one's attire: a bronze-boned supportive garment that stretched from bristly throat to broad hips, tight as a sausage casing. He spent a moment staring, wondering what it was for—then realized he was looking at a female, with a corset restraining more than a human's allotment of teats.
Red to his roots, he looked up to find her watching him, bestial face inscrutable. Then she winked, and he wondered if it was too late to run.
“Guardian, we of Gnashed Tusk are honored to share food with you,” the male rumbled in Thiolanc, holding up a bowl in offering. A sour, earthy reek wafted out—not from the food but from the hog himself—and briefly Cob regretted the mending of his nose. “The wolves say you are of Stag, and though we do not keep deer-food, we hope this satisfies.”
“Thank you,” said Cob, taking the bowl. A cursory glance showed him wild mushrooms, vettich, chunks of beet and some type of squash, plus other less identifiable vegetables drenched with vinegar, herbs and brine.
Well, could be worse, he thought, and looked up as the female held out a mug.
“Home brew,” she said, grinn
ing broadly. Her teeth were terrifying.
He took it with trepidation, but beneath the pad of brown foam it smelled sweet, so he inclined his head and said, “My thanks. The Gnashed Tusk has done well.”
Their beady eyes lit up, and they bobbed their heads and withdrew with ponderous grace. As they went, so did their aroma, and Cob let himself breathe again.
Down below, lesser hog-folk were offering different food to his friends, the scents of cooking-fat thick in the air. His mouth watered in envy, but he knew that stuff wouldn't go down well. On the run toward the Garnet Mountains, he had eaten mostly twigs.
When he looked to Arik, he found the skinchanger staring at him and quivering, the cut of meat untouched in his hands. Cob immediately popped a chunk of squash in his mouth, and with visible relief, Arik sat and chomped into the meat.
Bloody wolfish hierarchy, Cob thought as he picked through the bowl.
The crowd calmed as everyone fell to what food they had. Cob ate mechanically, paying more attention to the various factions: how the hogs seemed happy to share their food, while the wolves guarded their bowls and the feather-cloaked folk just stared as if trying to pick the tastiest morsel from the crowd. The rock-people did not eat, but tossed stones like dice while they waited, their lumpy heads bending together solemnly to inspect the results.
He tried a sip of the drink and found it thick and sweet and definitely fermented, like straining overripe fruit through his teeth. Not bad though, and the warmth it sent through him made him feel less exposed. After half of it, he felt confident enough to expand his senses.
It was easy to pick up the heartbeats of the skinchangers and beast-folk. More difficult were the ones without pulses: the stone-kin and the tree-people, who exuded a sense of sap moving through veins but had no pumping heart. Instinct told him that he could not command them. Though the Guardian had power over raw wood and earth and water, its control did not extend to the sentients that sprang from those sources.
He could barely sense the copper person at all.
Have you ever possessed an elemental? he thought at Haurah.
'It's not possible,' she said. 'At least not with a full elemental. There is no separation between substance and essence for them, and to mesh with us would disrupt them irretrievably.'
But there are part-elementals?
'Yes.'
When she did not elaborate, he prompted, How does that happen?
'Through magic.'
Often?
'No.'
And you could possess them?
She stared at him, her usually-expressive face blank, then said, 'We could. We have. Jeronek is of the earth-blood. But we will not do so again. While they make powerful vessels, they are unstable, and our control over them is limited. Our Jeronek worked with us willingly, but there have been others...'
Something clicked in his head. He saw the manor-house aflame, the fire radiating outward in annihilating waves. Floorboards blackening under his feet, paint boiling from canvas as he passed. Enkhaelen, he thought. People keep calling him the firebird, and in the nightmare he...lit up. After his wife died. He just ignited and took everything with him. Walked straight through the smoke that killed the Trifolders.
Then: They were after his daughter—because he created her. From what? Flesh? Fire? Silver? Is making a part-elemental bad?
Haurah said nothing.
Pike it, I should know these things. When were you gonna tell me?
'It does not matter while he wears a false body. His fire is in the blood, not the soul.'
Cob stared into the empty bowl, trying to sort his thoughts. No wonder Enkhaelen acted like a lunatic—but that tragedy had been years ago. Centuries, maybe. The widower in the nightmare was not the Inquisitor Archmagus of now.
'He is dangerously resilient,' Haurah added, 'but we have not seen his true body since Erosei's time. The one that fought me was a corpse. Perhaps they are all he has now.'
If he didn't have his living body, would he be able to control the Ravager so well?
Haurah looked speculative, then shook her head. 'No. You are right. The fire-blood gives him leverage; without it, the Ravager would simply eat him.'
Do you think...the black water can hurt him?
A stillness descended over the Guardians, and he wished he hadn't asked. In fact, he wished he hadn't thought of it. That cold breath on his neck...
'He has drawn you from those depths before,' said Haurah finally. 'Do not rely on it.'
Cob nodded, relieved, then registered the silence around him and looked up. Full night had fallen while he'd communed with Haurah, and the dim light from the bonfire reflected in scores of watching eyes.
Brushing aside his embarrassment, he put down the bowl and got to his feet. The night was no barrier to his vision; colors flattened and edges blurred, but he had adapted to the dark, and his Guardian senses filled in what he couldn't see. Their attention tingled on his skin.
“Now that we've eaten, we must talk,” he told them in Thiolanc. “The Ravager spoke to me. It wants to be free of its vessel, the firebird, but I do not know enough to slay him. He lived here long ago, but now he serves the Empire, which is no friend to you.”
A shudder of anger went through the crowd, raising growls from several corners. “Most of you are predators,” Cob continued, “so you are not my people—“
“Everyone is your people,” rumbled a bear. “We all have young to protect and dens to keep secure. That is your realm. Some of us hunt and some of us forage, but such divisions don't matter when we are all in danger.”
“Even we of the stone feel under threat,” said a grating voice, harder for Cob to trace. “The Empire's Scouring Light reaches further into the depths with each passing day.”
Another ripple of aggression went through the crowd, and Cob held up a hand for quiet. He didn't want to focus on the Empire, and regretted mentioning it. “I'm glad you stand with me. Hopefully you know things about the firebird that I don't. The wolves sensed his arrival, I think. Did anyone else?”
Ressah piped up from the head of her pack. “We saw your herd approach and slunk in at your heels. We did not sense the firebird until he emerged from his magic door.”
“But you recognized him?”
“Yes, Guardian. As we recognized you on sight. The Great Spirits are obvious to those who can see the spirit realm, as your quillwolf should know.”
Cob ignored the dig and made a note to ask Arik later. And the Guardians. He hadn't been able to see the Ravager in Enkhaelen until it manifested. “So no one can sense him?”
“We did,” said one of the rock-folk, rising to its feet. It was broader than most, with reflective garnet eyes and a chiseled, mica-flecked face. “We recall the feel of his essence against our stones all too well, though he is a mere candle to the flame he once was.”
Because of the corpse body, probably. “You weren't friends?”
The creature made a rough sound that might have been a scoff. “He bought our aid to raise his dwelling, but had no business with us beyond that, of which we approved. We have little interest in the surface or the bickering of you flesh-folk.”
“So you don't know what he was doing here? Or about his family, his powers...?”
“No, Guardian.”
“Anyone else? Wolves, you knew of him...”
“From legends,” said Ressah. “From our sires and dams. He has not visited in my lifetime.”
Cob nodded, but inside he cursed. Four centuries made for a very cold trail, and if even the elementals had kept their distance...
“I knew him,” said the copper one in a voice like scraping wire.
All heads turned to where it stood alone, like a sentinel among the loose rubble. From this distance, Cob saw a dim suggestion of facial features: beaten hollows that might have been meant as eyes, an overlap of thin sheets and wires that moved vaguely like a mouth. Its limbs had the ropy, noduled look of native metal, and though it held a basically bipedal sh
ape, there was no way of mistaking it for a human.
“Go on,” he said.
“He came here some time ago. I do not count. Nor do I pay attention to the movements of flesh, but he was fire and his partner silver, which I found interesting. The House of Silver has no bastion here, but we were allies once, and so I emerged to greet them.
“I do not understand why the silver lived with the flesh-folk, for it seemed sane. Sometimes it visited me, alone or with the fire. We spoke of the territory—of mining and quarry rights, of House business, of fleshy wars and social situations. I had little need for their company, but I did appreciate them, for they aided me when the flesh attempted to mine the vein that spawned me. All the local flesh seemed to respect them.”
“And...then what?”
“Then the fire did as fire is wont to, and destroyed all the flesh-creatures that had gathered around it. And it went away.”
Cob's stomach turned at the phrasing, but he went on, “Did you ever visit their home?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see their child?”
The copper creature tilted its head, and Cob felt the crowd tense, an uneasy murmur rippling through it. “Yes,” said the elemental. “The fire was foolish and did not hide it. I informed my House, and told the silver that it was wrong to allow such a thing. The silver did not listen, and suffered for it.”
“You tattled on them?”
“Metal and magic must not meld. To do so is to bring death. The true Houses of Metal oppose all abusers of the world's will—all mages, all wraiths.” Its empty sockets turned pointedly to Ilshenrir. “They may claim to have brought magic down with them from the stars, but the House of Silver found it first, and was riven by its folly. All were destroyed but the few in Muria who resisted its allure.”
The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) Page 4
