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

by H. Anthe Davis

Steeling himself, he hitched his stolen cloak tighter about his shoulders and clenched his hand on the arrowhead. They would see—those mages beyond the sphere—and if they could, they would follow.

  And so he ran.

  Chapter 10 – Salted Earth

  It took some time, but Dasira and Cob eventually rejoined the others with a water-cart, a pile of woven robes, wooden eye-guards, and several packets of dried goods. Atop the haul was a bottle of Riddish whiskey; Cob had tried to reject it, but the village elders would not take no for an answer.

  Ilshenrir dropped his veil as they approached, dispelling the wavery image of boulders and sand that had hidden the lagging four. Even without seeing them, Cob had angled straight for them, and Dasira smirked; illusions were apparently no match for the Guardian.

  That was good. Haelhene and Circle mages were heavy users of veils, and she expected to see much of both.

  “So how'd it go?” said Lark as she moved to inspect the cart. “Oh, alcohol!”

  “No drinking until we're out of the desert,” Dasira said curtly, snatching the bottle away. “We'll be dehydrated enough without compromising ourselves.”

  “Come on, just one for the road?”

  “You're a lush.”

  “Psh. I just understand how to relax and enjoy myself.”

  “Not the time for drinkin',” Cob intoned firmly. Lark crossed her arms, dark gaze following the bottle as Dasira tucked it into the cart, but finally sighed in concession.

  Arik, who had been sniffing everything over, poked his nose at the garments and made a curious sound, then stretched his jaw with the usual unnerving change. “Woven wolf- and dog-fur,” he gruffed. “We will smell like Riddish pack.”

  “Might as well gear up now,” said Dasira, and pulled one from the pile. “Accustom ourselves to it. We have a long trek ahead.”

  “You easterners need horses,” said Lark as she took the second. Shrugging her outer layers off, she adjusted the bright orange mage-robe she'd been wearing beneath, then pulled on the heavy garment and flipped the hood disdainfully. “It's just barbaric to go on foot everywhere.”

  “We could hire a draft-hog cart if you prefer. From all these draft-hog suppliers.”

  Lark made a face. “I don't get that either. They're so piking slow. In fact, I don't know why I follow you lot at all. It's certainly not for your charm.”

  Cob gave a cough that sounded suspiciously like an incredulous laugh. Dasira just shook her head and shrugged her robe on, then buckled Serindas over it. The garment was too long, so she tugged the slack up over the belt to hide the blade. Not great concealment, but it was something.

  Nearby, Fiora struggled with her own gear. Only a hand's-breadth taller than Dasira, she had the same length problem plus the need to carry two swords, a shield and a rucksack. The shield was the biggest problem, its metal face reflecting the winter sun like a mirror.

  “Need to cover that or leave it in the cart,” Dasira told the girl, who scowled but appropriated Lark's cast-off layers to make a rough shroud.

  Ilshenrir eyed the robes, then ran hands over his hair, across his shoulders and down toward his hips. In their wake, his substance shimmered and fluxed, roughening until it approximated the garment—had it been expertly tailored and rather sleek.

  “Don't be vain,” said Dasira. “It doesn't look real.”

  The wraith sighed and made another sweep, and the false garment sagged realistically but did not lose its gloss.

  “Maybe just...wear it?” said Lark.

  Lambent yellow eyes stared out balefully from beneath the false hood, but then the wraith's shoulders sank and he beckoned for the robe. “It is just...too difficult to be shabby.”

  “Oh gods, I know your pain, but we're all making sacrifices.”

  “Lack of drunkenness is not a sacrifice,” said Dasira.

  “You be quiet. I meant aesthetics.”

  Dasira opted to contain her comments about orange robes and red face-paint.

  As Lark helped Ilshenrir struggle into the robe, Dasira looked over the others. Cob's robe was short on him and tight in the shoulders, and not for the first time she reflected on how much he'd changed in the past two months. She could hardly see the child in him at all.

  Beside the cart, Arik remained in wolf-form. Fiora was resettling her gear over the robe, the silver sword across her back beneath the swaddled shield and her plain sword at her hip, the rucksack in the cart. Conspicuous, but then all of them were non-Riddish up close. From a distance, it could work.

  “So what now?” said Lark, looking to Dasira as she finished tugging Ilshenrir's robe straight. “We strike out into the desert?”

  “Not blindly. We want to keep the mountains just in sight; that should put us in the safe zone between Sapphire-patrolled territory and the deep salts. Once the Trivestean Plateau trails off into the plains, we can get closer to the border, because that's where the outposts give way to towns. I wouldn't suggest approaching them until we hit Finrarden, though.”

  “How will we know Finrarden?”

  “It's an actual city. Hard to miss.”

  “Then let's get movin',” said Cob, grabbing the cart by the handlebar. “C'mon.”

  They fell into an easy formation, the wolf ranging ahead but returning regularly to check on them, Cob and Fiora together in the middle, Lark and Dasira and Ilshenrir hanging back in a loose crescent. As they angled away from the mountains, the land dipped slowly, and the ground—initially the dark tan of cracked earth and sand—seemed to change in the distance, swirling with paleness and weird pastels like a giant's watercolors. The further panorama was lost in a faint haze.

  Despite the beaming sun, it was not hot. The air hung dry and crisp, motionless, with an almost anticipatory chill. Dasira considered the sloshing barrel and wondered if it would freeze overnight—but surely Cob could prevent that, like he protected them all from the cold.

  Lark passed out her excess scarves, and everyone tried on their eye-guards: thin pieces of wood carved with two slits for viewing and tied on by leather thongs. Not comfortable, but necessary in the bright light. Soon they were moving at a good clip, the ground flat and even, and Dasira began to feel optimistic.

  Then the cart stopped, and she nearly walked into the back of it.

  “What?” she said, squinting at Cob. He had half-turned to stare toward the mountains, eyes glazed with the Guardian's senses, and she traced his gaze to a cluster of blue flecks moving east along the flank of the foothills, toward the village.

  “Patrol,” said Cob.

  She bit back her 'I told you so'. “That just means we need to keep moving. If we can see them, they can see us; the only reason they're not on our tails already is that we could be normal Riddish. If they learn we're not...”

  “I told the villagers to say we robbed 'em. To say we're cultists tryin' to invade.”

  “You what?”

  He looked at her, frank and unyielding. “You said the soldiers might make trouble for 'em. I figure if they know we're outsiders, they won't waste time on harassin' old people.”

  “Stealth, Cob! Stealth!”

  “Like y'said, they've already seen us. They'd be comin' after us anyway. Jus' ensurin' they make the right choice.”

  “Light, I can't take you anywhere!”

  A smile cracked briefly through the stone of his face, then vanished. “Let's keep goin'.”

  “Piking pikes!”

  They turned further from the mountains after that, and in between bouts of seething rage, Dasira checked their back-trail to make sure the Sapphires weren't following. They might have mages; the Sapphire Army was as full of them as the Gold, and it was a rare Trivestean mage who didn't find employment there. They might be under scry right now.

  At her prompt, Ilshenrir raised a veil around them, and as the specks of blue disappeared into the distance, she forced her mind back to the trek. Experience was valuable here, but more so were weather and luck—which made attentiveness the key
to survival.

  As they drew closer to the point where bare earth became whorled salt-bed, Lark said, “How does a place like this even happen?”

  “How do mountains form?” Dasira rejoined absently, calculating whether they had come far enough to start paralleling the border. She didn't think so. “The earth and wind and waters do their own thing. We just stand and marvel after the fact.”

  “But surely this isn't natural. That cliff we came down was like someone took a bite out of the mountains. We know how the Rift was made, so why not this?”

  “You ever drop a rock in the water and watch the ripples?”

  “Yes...”

  “It's like that.”

  “Oh, so helpful.”

  “This isn't the time for storytelling.”

  “All right, so we can just stare at those two.” Lark gestured ahead to where Fiora had taken up a grip on the handlebar beside Cob's, her shoulder against his arm, his head bent slightly as they spoke in low tones.

  Dasira scowled. “I'm not gonna let you manipulate me while I'm trying to concentrate.”

  “There's nothing to concentrate on, just salt and dirt!”

  “Sinkholes. Monsters. Quicksand.”

  “Cob will sense it before you see it. C'mon.”

  Though it made her grind her teeth, she had to concede Lark's point. Even with Fiora constantly hanging on him, Cob had kept a keen eye on their surroundings throughout the trek, modulating the cold and spotting dangers and generally smoothing the way. His early experiments with the tectonic lever had been rough, but he seemed comfortable with it now—and with the Guardian. As much as she hated being reliant, she knew he'd keep them safe.

  “Fine,” she muttered. “Understand, this is just a folk-tale. The inner sea was here long before recorded history, so no one really knows—“

  “Just tell it already.”

  “Shush. Long ago, Senket the Sky-Ruler—that's the Eagle spirit—was angered by the wraiths impinging on his domain, so he tore a mountain up by its roots with the intention of dropping it on them. However, the wraith spires of that era weren't immobile; they could rise up and fly away, so he knew he had to be stealthy if he wanted to crush one. He reasoned that if he flew high enough, they wouldn't see him and his mountain, and he could catch them unaware.

  “He flew up, up, up until he could barely see the ground—which attracted the attention of the sun, who tried to peek over his shoulder at what he was doing. The heat burned his feathers black and cast his shadow down beneath him, so that when he finally caught the glint of the wraith spire below, it gave him away and the wraiths began to flee.

  “Unwilling to give up, he threw the mountain down at them. The impact shattered the land for a hundred miles, breaking the northeastern Garnet Mountains and breaching the coast to let the sea flow in. Senket circled down to survey the destruction, not sure if he had hit his target; between the dust and the surging water, it was impossible to tell.

  “Then he saw a rainbow on the water, and looked up—and there was the spire above him, plunging down like a knife.

  “Never had the Sky Ruler been surmounted by an enemy. His name even means 'highest'—none flew above him, none preyed on him. Yet in that moment he would have died if not for the sun shining its rainbow through the spire.

  “He evaded the strike and tried to fly away, but was too weak to get far. In desperation, he pleaded for the sun to set so that his burnt feathers could hide him in the darkness, but the sun couldn't help but peek over the horizon, still wanting to see what would happen. Finally, the moon took pity on Senket and lured her husband away, and Senket escaped into the night.

  “Later, he tried to attack the wraith spire again, but it had seated itself in the center of the crater and the waters around it reflected so brightly that he couldn't see well enough to hit it. He reluctantly settled among the plateaus to watch over the inner sea, awaiting the time when his enemy would emerge.”

  “He must've been a big eagle to carry a mountain,” said Lark.

  Dasira snorted. “Well, yes. There are lots of stories about him flying around with heavy objects, trying to drop them on things. In Kerrindryr there's a chasm called Senket's Scar, where he supposedly tried to fly a silver sword over the mountains so he could get at the wraiths on the other side, but got too cold and flew lower and accidentally cut the cliffs and left the sword lodged in Howling Spire.”

  “Incorrect,” said Ilshenrir from the other side. “The inner sea already existed when the Fourth Flight descended. While we do believe an impact created it, we do not know when it occurred. Likewise, Howling Spire existed before we arrived.”

  Dasira raised brows at the wraith. He had pushed his hood back, and his long hair spread across his shoulders and down his back like glass threads. “Were you there?”

  He shook his head, the bright strands barely shifting. “I do not remember.”

  “Why would you even put a spire here?” said Lark, gesturing around at the sand and the thin, cracked panes of salt. “Trying to get away from people, like in the Mist Forest?”

  Ilshenrir smiled humorlessly. “On the contrary. Before the sea shrank, humans clustered on its shores in multitudes and sailed their little ships nearly to Hlacaasteia's door. They were easy to capture, just as the White Isle and Erestoia once captured victims from the Wrecking Shore. We did not feel the need to move, then. Your story is correct in that we once could fly our spires away as needed.

  “When the Sealing occurred, it tilted the land—including the inner sea, so that the eastern ocean no longer fed it. As it shrank, the humans followed its edges inward, closer to us. We were content in harvesting them.

  “Then, four hundred years ago, the water began to drain precipitously. I do not know why, only that it disappeared in a matter of decades, leaving thick deposits of salt and other minerals encrusted around Hlacaasteia. My people are not swift in our reactions; by the time we realized the danger, we could not break free. The humans have withdrawn, but we can not.”

  “Well, that's what you get,” said Lark. “But why even bother with us?”

  “We...” Ilshenrir trailed off and looked thoughtful, as if deciding how to phrase it. “We are revolted by the idea of flesh, but we see how you flesh-folk are favored by this world. How you can perceive and interact with entities and energies that we can not. We wish to harness some of you to our will, so that when it comes time to eradicate you, we will not be dependent on our own unreliable senses. To that end, we steal you and change you to serve our purposes. The research station at Akarridi refines your souls into weapons which are proof against all but our own crystal blades. The White Isle experiments with biological and necromantic manipulation to create the perfect minions. And Hlacaasteia, before its isolation, was our center of Grey studies—using your kind as test subjects to discern the properties of that realm so that we might bridge it to once more assault the spirits.”

  Silence fell as he finished. Lark's mouth hung open—the chatterbox struck dumb for once. As for Dasira, she could not ignore the hairs standing up on the back of her neck. She had been around haelhene in the Palace, but never had one so plainly stated its goals.

  “I don't think the Emperor would approve of eradication,” she said finally.

  “We expect not.”

  She blinked, surprised, but Lark found her voice first. “So...your people and the Emperor aren't allies?”

  “Oh, we are.”

  “But you just said...”

  “An alliance is an arrangement of convenience, meant as temporary. We know that had he the power to destroy us, he would do so. Likewise, had we the power to destroy him, we would not hesitate. As neither of us can be assured of annihilating the other safely, we opt to ally against those who wish both of us ill—both intending, I'm sure, to turn on the other the moment it becomes feasible.”

  “Why do you want to kill us?” said Lark, eyes wide. “We're not doing anything to you.”

  “Your existence feeds
the spirits and perpetuates the life of the world. Until it is dead, we can not escape.”

  “You— What—“

  “Please understand that I do not agree with this,” said the wraith, though his tone held no apology. “Only the haelhene plot thus. The airahene who rescued me are not comfortable in this world but neither will they tear it apart in order to flee, and our more distant kin—the tiiahene, the luuihene—have made efforts to naturalize. They oppose my people as much as the spirits do. I can not say what we have lost from becoming terrestrial, or if we could gain it back by leaving, but I know that we must not attempt escape if doing so would destroy everything in our wake. There may be a more equitable way, and we are not without time.”

  Lark stared at him but said nothing, and for a while a thoughtful silence reigned as they walked in the tracks of the cart, the ground too hard-baked to kick up dust. Finally, she said, “I never thought I'd be here doing this, and I can't say I'm thrilled, but...I'm glad to hear the truth of these things. And I'm glad you're comfortable speaking freely.”

  “We are...friends, yes?” said Ilshenrir. “Not allies. I think our goals do not entirely intersect. But I would not harm any of you for any purpose.”

  “Not even if we were plotting against each other?” said Dasira in an undertone. Ilshenrir gave her a puzzled look; Lark's was chastising.

  “Nobody's plotting against anyone,” said the Shadow girl. “You've just spent too long around terrible people to see the decency in others.”

  “And you're a paragon of trust and virtue?”

  “Pikes, no. But I'm also not blinded by jealousy.”

  “I'm not—“ Dasira shut her mouth before she could start shouting. Cob and Fiora were still in earshot. “I don't want to talk about this. How about we discuss your crush on Arik?”

  Lark snorted. “If I had a crush on anyone, it'd be on—“ She stopped herself, but not before Dasira caught her telltale glance at Ilshenrir.

  “What is a crush?” said the wraith.

  “Nothing! It's nothing!”

  “It means she finds a certain physical shell appealing, and—“