The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3)

by H. Anthe Davis

  “A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” said Enkhaelen. “Now, if you don't mind—“

  “I know who you are. Chiat'at ce-teil Caele.”

  Still eavesdropping, Geraad heard Enkhaelen translated the words automatically: the Child by Fire. The necromancer's claw-like fingers tightened, and the bear seized on the ground, moaning horribly. “You know I don't like it when your people mention that,” he said through his teeth, and even through the empathy-shields Geraad felt his surge of anger.

  Vriene merely narrowed her eyes. “Where is your sword, Caele?”

  “Where is my daughter? No—let's be relevant. Why are you here?”

  “I sheltered the boy, Cob. From you, I assume.”

  “Mm.”

  Cob? thought Geraad. This is all about Cob?

  The two stared each other down, minds fraught with tangles of memory and suspicion that Geraad dared not pick at. Then Vriene's expression softened, and she said quietly, “You are not beyond redemption. Gwydren Greymark—“

  “Is never where he's needed,” Enkhaelen sneered. “Spare me your platitudes, 'Mother'. Any last words?”

  “First, stop hurting my husband.”

  Enkhaelen relaxed his clutching hand. The bear's spasms ceased, and he sagged in place, panting heavily.

  “Thank you,” said Vriene, and the fire faded to reveal sadness in her wide, tea-colored eyes. She turned her back on Enkhaelen, gaze seeking out one of the white-armored guards on the outskirts. “Malin, my son,” she said, “it is all right. I forgive you.”

  The guard bowed his blank-helmed head.

  Then Vriene faced forward again, looking down on the necromancer. “Do as you must.”

  “Uvadha't ahranxaca,” Enkhaelen said in an undertone. May your goddess bless you.

  A small smile touched Vriene's lips.

  Then Enkhaelen pressed fingertips to her brow and her eyes slid up beneath their lids, her mind vanishing from Geraad's perception. Yet she did not fall. A diagram passed through the necromancer's mind—a network of puppet-strings—and as he retracted his hand, she swayed then straightened. At a flick of his fingers, she stepped back, face no longer peaceful, just empty. On the ground, the great bear gave a roar full of pain and sorrow.

  Geraad stared. Was she dead? The disappearance of her mind was the same as other deaths he'd witnessed, but it had happened so swiftly, so effortlessly. And her body...

  “No experiments today, Shaidaxi?” said the Emperor. Enkhaelen did not acknowledge him, but crammed a hand into a robe-coat pocket and moved toward the bear. As he crouched by the beast's head, he withdrew what appeared to be a silver ice-pick, and Geraad recoiled from the images that danced through his mind: a gory history of anatomy and mutilation distilled into a quick pacifying procedure.

  Closing his eyes, Geraad cut himself off from all psychic input, then did the same for the quivering girl.

  When he opened them again, the searchlights caught him.

  He must have raised his head by accident, or perhaps there was some magnetism to the Emperor that drew his gaze. But those were not eyes that held him. They were windows into some other realm, and as Geraad stared, trapped, the light flooded into him.

  His shields blew away like so much chaff. There was no resisting the incisive glare, no holding himself together as layers upon layers of rationalization and self-deception seared away to expose his soul. His actions and hesitations, his dreams and fears and follies and shames—

  Childish pranks. Worm-mashing. Pitching rocks at the town pariah. Falling ten feet from a dead tree and feeling the bone snap in his arm. First psychic spasm, gossip, illicit assignations with friends' girlfriends. Fisticuffs. Classes, mental eavesdropping during tests, backlash from a fumbled spell. His first day as a Warder. Being ignored by Count Varen and belittled by the guard captain, winnowing through the petty thoughts of the court. Boredom, disillusionment, the women uneasy around him, his own awkwardness. Never being able to walk the streets in plain-clothes but always chained to the robe. Restlessness, the nervous excitement at the call to the Riftwatch towers, the horse bucking, the shock and pain of hitting the road—

  “Aradys, stop.”

  Geraad hit the floor nearly limp. His head rang with sound and emotion, the sharp probes of other mentalists delving into the vaults the Emperor's gaze had unsealed. Down to the thoughts and visions he kept to himself—

  “And call off your piking mind-rapists,” Enkhaelen added. “Not enough that you gaze my assistant, you have to break him too?”

  “He is relatively pure,” came the Emperor's voice, amused. “A few shadows in the corners. I will keep him.”

  “I didn't bring him for you.”

  “No?”

  The probes burrowed deeper, puncturing memories of white wings and black antlers, a naked man being shoved through a cell door, the grating slide of stone on stone. Geraad struggled to push them away and only dimly realized that he was also struggling against a pair of hands trying to shake him. But the mentalists were too persistent—the three of them harrying from different angles, picking at different memories like birds stealing crumbs—and he clutched at the floor, seeing nothing, until his hand touched boot-leather.

  A thread of cold ran up his fingers, igniting all the old breaks.

  He gasped, then clamped his mind around that memory: the Gold dungeon, the little hammers, the bones in his hands splintering one by one. All the pain and fear and bewilderment came to him afresh, with the pitiless faces of his tormentors above him as they chipped incessantly at his mind, the shackles biting into his wrists, the bands across his knuckles flattening his fingers in place. Gathering them together, he thrust all those fragments and torments out in a projective spasm and felt them strike his eavesdroppers.

  Their probes recoiled. He yanked up a mind-shield and, as the traumatic memory receded, felt the hands fisted in his robe. Heard a voice saying, “Sir? Sir?” It was a relief to know that he had not hit the girl with his projection, or that her own resistance had been strong enough to deflect a blow not meant for her.

  His eyes would not clear, though. Dazed, he decided to just lay there until they did.

  “You can't take all my tools and still expect me to do quality work,” said Enkhaelen somewhere nearby. “I need this one to help reclaim the dreamrakers from Daenivar, so unless you're willing to give up on them—“

  “No,” said the Emperor sharply. “I will not allow that slight to go unanswered.”

  “So you can't have this one. You have plenty already; don't get greedy.”

  “Do not think that you can dictate my actions, Shaidaxi.”

  “I don't. I just need you to not stomp all over everything I'm trying to do here. These projects are at your behest. If you don't want me to make you servitors anymore—“

  “Peace. I value your work.”

  “Then stop sticking your fingers in it while my back is turned. Or letting Rackmar. You know we don't get along; there's no need to add sabotage to it.”

  The Emperor chuckled, somehow detached. “Very well. I shall allow you to proceed.”

  “Thank you.”

  Robes swirled against Geraad's forearm, and he felt the girl recoil. Then gloved hands cupped his face, the cold radiating even through the leather, and he tried to look up at the necromancer but saw only white.

  “Piking— Blinded another one,” he heard Enkhaelen mutter under his breath. “I'm getting tired of this. Brace yourself, Iskaen, this will hurt.”

  Geraad did as he was told, and the pain came: a lancing sensation in first one eye then the other, and a scraping along the inside of each orb that sent visceral shocks all the way to his toes. His eyes throbbed in their sockets, and he whimpered and clutched at Enkhaelen's unseen wrists until the necromancer made a sound of annoyance and paralyzed him.

  There followed more pain, more unspeakable sensations. Then finally specks of color began to bloom in the null of his vision, and the pressure of Enkhaelen's fingers left h
is eyes. He blinked as the pieces of his sight cohered like a puzzle to reveal the necromancer examining him from close range. Though his face was stark, his eyes like chips of glacier ice, there was concern in the line of his mouth. It evaporated as Geraad focused.

  “Good,” he said, then rose and turned without another word, black robe sweeping away.

  A gauntleted hand gripped Geraad by the arm and hauled him up, and he worked to brace his feet under himself, still weak in the knees. Another gauntlet gripped his shoulder, and he looked up into the stern face of the Crown Prince.

  From this vantage, the prince's exhaustion was obvious—not only in the darkness beneath his eyes but from the methodical clench of his jaw, the glassiness of his stare. Geraad sensed the mentalists' light hooks in him, and if he had any defense against them, it did not show. The teardrop-shaped pendant at his throat radiated a subtle suggestion but was apparently not meant to make him look pristine.

  “Green robe. You're not a military mage,” he said in a low voice. He overtopped Geraad by more than a hand-span, shoulders half again as broad, and in the bulky white enameled armor he looked like he could crush Geraad as an afterthought. His eyes were hard. “No Inquisition insignia either. Civilian?”

  “I— Yes. Yes, Your Highness,” Geraad stammered. He was still rebuilding his shields—the work almost automatic now that the mentalists had ceased probing him—but could feel the threat radiating from this man. The serious consideration of snapping his neck.

  “And you serve Enkhaelen by choice?”

  “It's...a...complicated arrangement.”

  “Is it.”

  I should have run when I had the chance, he thought, cringing as the Crown Prince's grip tightened. Politics in the court of Count Varen had not trained him for entanglement with a mad necromancer, a pissed-off prince, scads of hostile mentalists and an Emperor who might not be human.

  Might not? a little voice yammered in his head. He holds suns in his eyes. He stripped you to the soul.

  The Crown Prince's eyes narrowed. Geraad found himself wishing Enkhaelen would intervene again, and felt sick. Trying to explicate their arrangement without sounding callous or foolish was beyond his capabilities—beyond sanity, really.

  For a moment they stood like that, Geraad speechless, the Crown Prince growing ever more thunderous. Then abruptly the prince relaxed his clench and just steadied Geraad as he swayed. “He is like a spider,” he said in an undertone, anger replaced by something sadder. “Pulls you into his web, binds you up and lets you hang there, waiting for the fatal bite. It always comes, mage. Don't get comfortable.”

  With that, he released Geraad entirely.

  Still lightheaded, Geraad braced his feet and straightened his robe. He was more than ready for this to be over. The Crown Prince seemed to feel the same, and they both looked toward Enkhaelen, who was crouched now between the remaining women. They were lashed to the floor by white fibers, paralyzed, their minds beating inside them like frantic moths, and as he watched the necromancer pierce and knit at them with the long blue needles of his magic, Geraad felt his stomach turn.

  Nearby, watching with frightened eyes, were the boy and the girl: her arms around him from behind, his hands gripping her wrists. It was not difficult to see the family resemblance between them and the women. The bear-man and the priestess were already gone, the tiles smooth and pristine where they had been.

  'Come here,' he sent to the girl, meaning her brother too. Enkhaelen had said this wouldn't work on children, so surely...

  She shot him a glare and stayed put.

  “There,” said Enkhaelen, rising. “Both adjusted accordingly. I'm not sure if the elder will convert—she's already frail—but the rest should succeed. I need to talk to Rackmar about his expectations, though. Whatever he was trying to do here, he's shit at it.”

  The Emperor chuckled. “And the boy?”

  Geraad saw the girl bare her teeth at Enkhaelen as the necromancer turned toward them. 'Come here now,' he projected, but she did not budge. Unconcerned, Enkhaelen stepped over the body of the mother and leaned in to peer at the boy's frightened face.

  “What about him?” he said. “I told you we can only handle mature specimens. Even pubescent ones are problematic—all those chemicals asurge. Throw him back into the human sea for a while, then reel him in once he's grown.”

  “He has seen too much.”

  “Then mindwash him. What do you have all these mentalists for, anyway?”

  “You.”

  “I'm flattered, but I don't need that much attention.”

  “Supervision. No. You will convert him.”

  Enkhaelen scoffed, then said, “Wait—are you serious? You would risk losing the whole batch just because Rackmar wants a new toy?”

  “He is my proxy, Shaidaxi. In this final game, his needs are mine. If your work can be wrecked by so little a thing, then perhaps it is time that it be re-wrought.”

  “But I've put so much into this! I've nearly—“

  “Recreated my people?”

  “...No. No, but—“

  “Cease your whining.”

  Enkhaelen's hands fisted. Then he crammed them into his robe-coat pockets like a stubborn child and said, “Understand this, Aradys: It. Won't. Work.”

  Up on the throne, the Emperor leaned forward slightly. Geraad dared not look at him directly but it seemed that the light from his eyes had intensified, their radiance burning into his peripheral vision. “You dare dictate to me?” he said, and there was no warmth in him now.

  Such was the rage flowing from the necromancer that Geraad expected him to pull a blade from his pocket. But his hands came free still clenched on nothing, then slowly opened.

  “I know you're the master,” said Enkhaelen, “but just...let me control this much.”

  “No. Do as you are told.”

  And that was it. The resistance left him; he nodded and touched the boy's face with a stiff hand. Something glinted between his fingers. The boy trembled briefly then went still, eyes sagging shut, and his mind vanished from Geraad's perception like an escaping bird.

  “What— Aedin! What did you do?” shrieked the girl, hands coming off the boy's shoulders to claw at Enkhaelen's face. They hit blue wards and the necromancer reached through them to jab her in the throat, quick, precise. Her fear flared bright as she froze in place—muscles locked like before, not just her legs but everything. She fell backward as stiff as a board, and Geraad winced as she hit the floor.

  “You may keep that one,” said the Emperor. “She suits you.”

  “Thank you, Majesty.”

  “Now go. I weary of your presence.”

  “Yes, Majesty.”

  With another diagramming thought and a spider-like gesture, Enkhaelen had the girl on her feet and moving jerkily. Her mind still shrieked inside its cage, and it took all Geraad's strength not to reach out and silence her. Instead, as the floor beneath the frightened women and the husk of a boy began to unfurl, he closed himself in enough mental armor to go numb.

  Still, the psychic uproar battered at him like heavy rain against castle walls, furious in its distance. When a gloved hand took his arm, he let it pull him away—across the pulsing tiles, to the harder floor of the corridor, back the way they had come. Toward safety.

  “That wasn't what I called you here to do,” the Crown Prince growled at their side.

  “Perhaps you should have specified,” said Enkhaelen coldly. “I'm not omniscient.”

  “I told you they were Rackmar's plan. I thought you could—“

  “Save them? Don't be a fool, Kel. The girl only lives because she's a proto-mentalist, and if not for Iskaen I would neither know nor care.”

  “I thought you were better than this.”

  “I don't know why. I've been doing this longer than you've been alive.”

  “That's not an excuse! You taught me—“

  “You were a child then. Children need simple, stark concepts like good and evil be
cause they can't yet comprehend reality. Don't mistake a bit of kindness for evidence that I care.”

  Geraad heard the Crown Prince choke. Nearby emotions pressed in on him but he couldn't pick them out from the still-dense background of the throne room.

  They jerked to a halt suddenly, Enkhaelen's hand leaving Geraad's arm. “Don't touch me!” the necromancer snapped, and Geraad looked up to see the Crown Prince gripping the much smaller man by the shoulders, glaring as if he could crush him with his mind.

  “Let. Go. Now,” said Enkhaelen through his teeth. At his sides, his gloved hands made fists, threads of blue-black energy gathering around them.

  “You would strike me down?” said the Crown Prince, face hard. “Then do it. You've dragged me this low, you might as well finish me off.”

  “Oh, pike your self-pity,” the necromancer sneered. “You think this is low? You started on a mountain; falling off a few cliffs won't even get you close to the rest of the world. Go back to slutting around the court. It's what you're good at.”

  “There is no court! Everyone here is his plaything—“

  “Just like you.”

  The Crown Prince shoved Enkhaelen away in fury, and Geraad barely managed to step aside. As Enkhaelen bounced off the corridor wall, Geraad saw tiny threads unweave from it as if to pursue him, only to smooth away as he took his distance.

  Straightening his robe with brisk tugs, Enkhaelen said, “We don't require an escort to the portal room. Return to your duties.”

  The Crown Prince's illusion wavered beneath a surge of rage. Geraad caught a glimpse of changed eyes, sharp teeth, zigzag seams— Then the prince turned and stormed past the paralyzed girl, down the hall and away.

  The rest of the trip passed in silence. As they crossed the portal back into the laboratory, the heaviness lifted from Geraad's shields, and he let them drop in relief. The girl still radiated a miasma of bad feelings, but he could handle that. He could help one person.