“Oh, pike you. Why didn't you mention this back at the wolf-place when I could still have demanded the shadows take me home?”
“Best not to reveal everything around people who may yet betray us.”
“What? Like who?”
“The copper elemental,” said Dasira as she started down again. “It knew Enkhaelen and we have no idea if it was telling the truth about betraying him. Plus the cat-man, skulky thing, and the owl-folk—raptors like the Ravager. It manifests six wings, for pike's sake, including big thick owl wings. How much would you bet me they're not his spies?”
Lark looked pained, then shook her head. “They're not here now, so out with it all.”
“Fine.” As she took a moment to gather her thoughts, she caught sight of Cob up ahead, looking back at her. The terrain had lengthened the distance between them, rocky and irregular and furred with spurbarks, but she didn't doubt that he could hear her. “Fine, everyone listen so I don't have to repeat myself,” she said.
He waited until she was at his heels, then to her surprise he stepped aside and offered his hand. There was a ledge just past him—a short drop for someone in good condition but one she knew would rattle her skull and creak her bones like this. Grudgingly she took his hand and let him lower her, boots scuffing on the rock wall for traction.
This left her in the lead, and not wanting to linger, she kept walking, half-turned to address them as she supported herself on passing trees. “You have to understand a few things about the Heartlands,” she said. “Fiora, you're a native but you're also a Trifolder, so your perspective is skewed. I was born in the hills of northern Riddian, and I know the Empire is no monolith. It has cracks the size of the Rift.
“The relationship between Riddian and Trivestes is the biggest. They used to be one principality, back before the War of the Lion and Eagle—Tevin, I think it was called. And they were fairly harmonious. Eagles above, wolves below, sharing the land because they lived in different niches.
“But the war came, and it's not 'Lion and Eagle' for nothing. There was an Eagle Emperor on the throne, and when he was slain, his people fled into the tableland. It wasn't a new thing; they always retreated when they experienced big setbacks, to hide in their aeries. But it left the wolves and other folk on the field without them, against a magic-wielding enemy force. They were massacred.
“Ever since, they've detested each other. The Emperor forces them together through marriages and the Sapphire Army, but there's always some incident going on, and there are raiders who patrol the desert fringe just to kill any Trivesteans they find on the wrong side of the border. Of course, there are Trivesteans who do the same.
“These raiders sometimes have to hide in the deep desert when the Sapphire Army retaliates. Much of it is toxic, but they've found livable pockets. I know some of them. I plan to take us through them.”
“Go back to that word 'toxic',” said Lark.
Dasira waved her off. “Won't matter. We're not going as far as Crystal Valley, which means if we're lucky we won't even meet any wraiths.”
“All right, explain that!”
“Hlacaasteia,” interjected Ilshenrir, voice still somewhat hollow. “The flagship of the haelhene—my former people. Entombed in the salt.”
“Right,” said Dasira. “It's stuck in the exact center of the desert. We won't get near it.”
“Now you've cursed us.”
“Quiet, Lark.”
“Isn't Hlacaasteia one of the places you thought they'd bring Cob?” said Fiora. “The one where we'd all die no matter what we did?”
Dasira grimaced. “Yes.”
“Why are we letting you plan our course?”
“If you think you can do better—“
“Absolutely. We call up the shadows and go back to Turo, or Cantorin, or wherever the shadowless circle ends, and trek from there.”
“Turo will be under surveillance,” said Dasira. “Cantorin is an option, but that would mean going through densely populated territory, all of it hostile. If we cut through the desert and get the clans to turn a blind eye, we can reach the Imperial Road without anyone the wiser.”
“If!”
“Every plan is composed of 'ifs'. These are the best we can hope for.”
“If we went to Cantorin, we'd have my temple on our side, and Trifold sympathizers all the way to the Palace.”
“Are you sure they're still yours?”
“What?”
“People do come back from the Palace, just not unchanged.”
She caught the look in Fiora's eyes when she glanced back—narrow, flat, angry—but the girl didn't respond. “I put no more faith in my people,” continued Dasira, “but the less contact we have with anyone, the better. And the Riddish won't nose about our business.”
“Why don't we vote?”
“No,” said Cob. They all looked at him, and despite the bark armor and antlers, he shifted on his hooves like an anxious child and refused to meet their eyes. “We're already goin' this way,” he mumbled.
“Cob!”
“Don't yell at me, Fiora. Yellin' doesn't change my mind.”
“I'm not, I just don't understand why you're siding with her!”
“For the record, I like the civilization route,” said Lark.
Cob sighed. “I'm sidin' with her because she has more experience. You haven't been out in the world any more than me.”
“Oh, we're talking about her experience now?” Fiora jabbed a finger in her direction. “She's an Imperial, a murderer, a traitor and a spy, Cob! Why would you think that's changed? Are you so wrapped around her finger that you can't see she'll get us killed?”
“Fiora,” he said tightly.
“No! You won't kill her when she obviously deserves it, so I want to know why I shouldn't do it myself!”
In the shocked stillness that followed, Dasira felt herself smile. It had been a while since anyone had said such things to her face.
“Because your plan is to walk into the Palace and poke Enkhaelen in the eye,” she said calmly, “and you know little about either of them. I've worked with Enkhaelen for forty-five years, and been an agent of the Palace for just as long. If you think you can get in there without my help... Well, I invite you to try.”
Fiora looked to Cob. “She'll obviously turn on us. You have to—“
“No. Stop,” he said with quiet force. He turned a flinty gaze on each of them, then continued, “I need you as a herd— A team, not at each other's throats. I'm not on anyone's side because you're all on mine. D'you understand?”
For a moment, Fiora looked mutinous, then dropped her gaze to the icy rocks. “Yes.”
“Yes,” Dasira echoed.
His face held no belief, but he nodded. “Go on then. Keep walkin'.”
Dasira gripped a narrow spurbark trunk to help navigate the next step down. Not far below, the ragged slope flattened into an almost-walkable course, and she willed herself to reach it. The muscles along the backs of her legs were burning, all the wounds of her recent fights hanging heavy, and the tentative balance she had regained overnight was starting to waver. She did not want to be carried, but neither did she want to pitch headlong down the mountain, and the line between the two was thinning rapidly.
“Should I keep talking, too?” she said, minding her footholds. “We've got twenty-plus days on the road. You'll forget everything I tell you by then.”
“Might as well say it now. Who knows when we'll lose you?” sniped Fiora.
Cob's anger was tangible, a dark wave. “Pikes, what did I jus' tell you?”
The Trifolder girl did not answer.
“The Palace is alive,” said Dasira, pretending Fiora didn't exist. “It's some kind of organism. I don't know the specifics, but it grows, moves, changes—all by the Emperor's whim. The White Road from it to Keceirnden is an outgrowth, and there are tendrils of it all through the swamp. That's why no army has ever reached it. The Palace is aware of them as soon as they touch its ed
ge.
“Among the pilgrims, though, it shouldn't notice us. My kind and Ilshenrir's are common there; Fiora and Lark are plain human; Cob, you can probably pass if you keep a lid on the Guardian. Arik, I'm not sure, but we've had stranger types volunteer for conversion.”
“And once we're inside?” said Cob. “If the whole thing's alive...”
“It gets trickier. The Emperor rearranges the interior whenever he gets bored, so there's no floor-plan to follow. For Midwinter, though, he lets pilgrims into the throne-room en masse, so we can probably just go in with them. The problem is avoiding conversion.”
Fiora snorted. “That's easy. Just don't convert.”
Dasira glanced back, smiling flatly. “And what, pray tell, do you think I mean by conversion?”
The others were arrayed up and down the rocks behind her, with Fiora at the back. The girl returned Dasira's gaze with narrow suspicion. “Pledging allegiance and faith in the Imperial Light, obviously. Leaving some other religion to join the Empire's. That's what the word means.”
“No. They're not converting. They're being converted.”
“That's just picky phrasing.”
“It's not religious. It's the process that creates people like me.” She shook back her sleeve to show the bracer. “This didn't spontaneously grow here. Enkhaelen made it, but only after the original conversion attempt failed. He picked up my pieces and—“ Off topic! Off topic! “—See, the Palace doesn't just change itself. It's been taught how to alter those it swallows up. How to bend them to the Emperor's will, or grind up those that can't be bent and reconstitute them into mindless monstrosities.”
“What makes you different?” said Fiora. “If you bow to his will...”
Dasira cursed mentally. “Enkhaelen. He handmade me after I was rejected from the pit—I don't know why. But that bound me to him instead of the Palace, and...”
Memory rose like bile in her throat. She closed her eyes, trying to force it back down, but instead it enfolded her. The slimy caul on her skin, the dull ache inside, her vocal cords straining against the thick gel that pulsed out from her lungs. The sudden freedom from it, and her ragged voice echoing back from the walls of the hushed white chamber, incoherent in its defiance. Not dead yet. Not changed properly. Hollow and hurt and alone, but not going without a fight.
And a black-gloved hand on her mucus-slick shoulder. A quiet promise.
'Vengeance.'
Even now, it brought her back to herself.
“I don't know why he picked me,” she said, returning to the path. “And it doesn't make me immune to the Palace's effects, but I can weather them better. Anyway, Midwinter is a time of mass conversions, so we'll have to be careful. And quick.”
“D'you know where Enkhaelen will be?”
“By the Emperor, I'd assume. He doesn't visit the Palace any more than necessary.”
“So he might not be there?” said Fiora. “This is sounding more and more like a trap.”
“The Ravager told me he's there,” said Cob.
“Oh, and the Ravager is reliable?”
Dasira cut back in before they could start bickering. “He'll be there because it's Midwinter. That's when the Emperor recrowns himself. All of the command staff attend, and sometimes the kings and Lord Protectors too.”
“More people to worry about,” Cob grumbled.
“No more than the mob of fanatics we're trying to sneak in with. Too bad we have no way to trick the mentalists. We'll just have to think Light thoughts.”
“Fantastic,” said Fiora with all the venom in the world.
Dasira smiled, satisfied.
*****
This deep in winter, the days were short, and soon the sun dipped below the rim of the Trivestean plateau. Though rosy light still edged the clouds, the temperature dropped fast.
Feeling it, Cob decided it was time to try out the tectonic lever. He had been examining the lay of the land through his bare feet, trying to find somewhere that felt like a good camp-site, but the rough hillsides and dense tree-cover did not provide many options. Deeper though, below snow and rock and gnarled roots, he felt caverns—including one that nearly touched the surface.
“Don't follow me,” he said, and headed up the icy slope as if it was a staircase.
Hillside hunched over most of his target cavern, but a section had sheared away in the recent past, leaving thinner stone. He stood a while, contemplating how the cavern would react when it was breached. The walls felt firm, the ceiling solid, but he had never tried this before.
He looked to where his friends waited on the trail, then scanned the slope above them. Rocks, snow, frozen soil, tall but tenuously-rooted trees. Big avalanche danger.
“Go back further,” he called to them. “Ilshenrir, put wards up. Whatever you'd use for big rocks. This could get bad.”
He heard Lark squawk an objection, but they all scuttled back until he could barely see them through the trees. He still felt them, dimly, but since he did not know if he could control the lever and guard them at the same time, it was best to rely on the wraith.
Taking a deep breath, he touched the chisel-end to the stone at his feet.
The lever felt somehow alive in his grip. At just a touch, cracks formed within his mind's eye: where the stone would rupture and cave inward, where it would stay standing. He drew the chisel-end along the rock, intrigued by how the pattern changed with each new position. This was not an earthquake-maker; it was a precision tool, as delicate as his concentration.
Holding the image of what he wanted in his head, he raised it over the proper spot and struck.
The hillside shivered, trees shedding great sheets of snow and ice. The tip of the lever punctured the rock like a needle, and he felt cracks vein out wildly from its point of impact, following the strictures he had set. Eyes closed, he switched his grip and pulled, both feeling and seeing the rock break into the required patterns. The sound of collapsing stone was deafening.
As the last pebble dropped, he opened his eyes to find a ragged hole in the rock wall, punched five feet wide and three deep before expanding into musty darkness. To the left, a section of hill had subsided inward but felt stable.
Looking back, he saw rubble covering the path, a patch of barren hillside above. At the fringe of the damage, a piled-up circle of debris surrounded a shimmering bubble of force.
“Cob! You suck goat balls!” came Lark's sharp voice from within.
With a sigh, he beckoned, and saw the bubble start to move. Debris tumbled into the hole it vacated, and with some squinting he managed to see the figures inside, struggling along the irregular rocks. Turning the lever over, he planted the blunt end down and concentrated on the landscape, fixing every stone and icicle and fleck of snow in place. By the time they reached him, they were red-faced from exertion and he ached dully, his back knotted like he had been trying to hold up a beam.
“What the pike was that?” hissed Lark, wild-eyed behind her scarf. “You trying to get us killed before we even reach the Palace?”
“I made a shelter,” he said, nodding to the hole.
The Shadow girl looked from the cavern to him incredulously, then made a sound of annoyance as Arik brushed past to peek in. The skinchanger sniffed, then set a paw on the rubble slope, and Cob made sure his footing stayed firm.
“I will investigate,” said Arik, and disappeared inside.
“This is crazy,” said Lark. “You want us to sleep down there? What if it all falls in? What were they thinking, giving you that thing?”
Cob scowled. “I'm still learnin'. You don't wanna go in, you can sleep outside.”
They contemplated the hole until Arik yawped his all-clear, then one by one they filed in, until only Lark remained. Cob offered his arm to her and she leveled a glare that could have stripped paint. “You're crazy, they're crazy, and I'm crazy for staying with you people.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“But if I give up, then you'll just get your crazy selves
killed. If you could steer us toward a nice inn room and a hot bath, though, I'd be much obliged.”
“I'll try. Now get in the pikin' hole.”
She made an obnoxious face at him, then took his arm and stepped down. He followed.
Ilshenrir had summoned a mage-light, and in its glow Cob saw that the chamber he had breached was the first in a network, shallow and debris-filled but feeding into a larger room with a smooth bowl-like floor. From there, a water-worn cut led into a third chamber, barely four feet high and tapering down to a crack.
“I suppose this isn't bad,” said Lark as she moved inward, running a gloved hand along the smooth wall. “It cuts out the wind, and nothing will melt on us when we start a fire.”
“I will set wards to divert the smoke,” said Ilshenrir.
“Aw, and I was looking forward to asphyxiating in my sleep.”
Cob slumped down at the foot of a wall as the others bustled around him, divesting themselves of gear and setting up camp. This had been their routine since bypassing Akarridi, him guiding the way to their night's shelter and them doing the rest. He was not tired, not really; constant contact with the earth seemed to renew him, so that every long stride buoyed the next. It was the frustration that drained him.
Several times on this day's trek, he had pried at the Guardians' secrets. Only Vina and Jeronek responded, and while he had spent some time in Vina's memories of the ancient world, nothing seemed relevant. Interesting, yes—a pre-human perspective on a world teeming with active and tangible spirits, back before the Spirit Realm had been pulled away from the physical. But nothing he could use against the Palace, or Enkhaelen.
The other three Guardians remained closed. He understood Erosei acting like that, the insufferable bastard, but why Haurah or his father would refuse him, he could not guess.
Still, there was time. Short days of hiking, long nights of waiting. He didn't need sleep anymore, not really. He would wrestle the Guardians until they gave in.
“Cob, wakey wakey,” said Lark from close by, and he blinked up and realized he had missed most of the preparations. Food was already cooking in a shallow, spider-legged pot the hog-folk had given them, and the girls were down to their lounging-clothes. The chamber felt insulated, practically warm.
The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) Page 16
