From one instant of the Dark.
Shit. Fiery festering shit.
Now I know how Savaad felt, down in that basement.
“Grab any horse you can,” he shouted to the mobile men. “Haul the injured on. We need to get them back. And 'ware the slick piking tiles, we don't need to break any more necks today!”
Some moved quickly, some sluggish. Linciard took a leaf from Sarovy's practices and slapped the laggards on the back of the helm, pushing them into motion. It seemed to help. It was more difficult to shake the fog in his own head, like his old conditioning was trying but failing to take hold. Like his mind wanted to jettison all of this, but could not.
He had no horse. She was dead, his beautiful Vada. Horribly, messily dead.
How could this happen? How could they do this?
Did they ask the same thing when they saw the crush?
“Sergeant. Sergeant!” He looked up into a shadow and flinched, then realized it was one of his men ahorse. The lancer held out a hand, beckoned, and after a moment of blank idiocy, Linciard forced his sword into its sheath and clasped the man's arm. The lancer hauled, and Linciard heaved up behind him on the saddle, only realizing when he swung a leg over that he was missing a chunk of his left boot.
He tried to curl his toes, and the nerves, as if just remembering they had been cut, set fire to his whole leg. With a curse, he clamped an arm around the lancer and gestured forward.
The captain was leaning against his horse, forehead to the shoulder-strap, one hand clutching the pendant at his neck. As they picked their way past, Linciard said, “Sir?”
Sarovy looked up slightly. His face was pallid, almost grey, his eyes too wide. “Coming, I'm coming,” he rasped, and waved them away. The horse gave them a weird look.
“Go,” Linciard told the lancer, though he wanted the opposite. Even as they left the fancy tiles behind and passed through the wave of specialists heading up the hill, he could not turn his gaze from the captain and the colonel, unmoving.
*****
“So. Do you remember, captain?”
Sarovy stayed silent. His thoughts were a whirl of nonsense.
“Have you broken your psychic seal?”
So many pictures, faces, few with any meaning to him. The Cray crone? Sapphire armor? Had it been some sort of waking nightmare, pulling pieces of his past together along with nonsensical illusions?
He felt at his throat. No wound.
Of course there was no wound. He had not been shot.
He was lucky. Skilled. He had never taken an injury on the field. Never been sick.
Did not sleep much. Only ate when he was reminded. Alcohol had no effect.
He was special.
No, no. Nothing happened. Nothing is wrong.
He could feel the pressure behind his eyes trying to erase what he had seen, but new pieces kept bubbling up. The names and ranks of the soldiers with him in the Palace. The Emperor's sandals. The honeycomb heart, buzzing with trapped life. The light below...
Thinking about it made his face ache, as if he had strained all its muscles in a deep grimace. But it was smooth under his fingertips. Soft...
Featureless.
In fear, he clenched his hand on the winged-light pendant and the pressure washed away, defeated like the dementing properties of Vrallek's stare. He breathed deeply through a thin mouth, out a narrow hooked nose. Pulled his helm off to run a hand over his short black hair.
Saw the broken tip of the crossbow bolt still embedded inside it, where the base of his skull would be.
Nausea squeezed him tight.
“There is no point in denying it. Not after that.” Wreth's voice was dry, amused, as if Sarovy had merely embarrassed himself here. “Or will you push it down like the rest with the sheer strength of your denial?”
“The rest.” To his ear, he sounded like he had been swallowing sand.
“You've never wondered about your mindwashings, captain? Your crime?”
“I am in exile. For...gross insubordination.”
“For what, exactly?”
He closed his eyes. Surely the memory was there. Something had broken in his mind, and it had to be a mentalist's lock. There was nothing else in him to break.
But all he could see, when he thought of the Palace, was his knee on the shining floor, the Sapphire Eye on his fist. His brother and sister officers at his sides. No punishment. No singling out. No taste of treachery or doubt or even reverence. Another feeling.
Joy.
And then the floor unraveled, and...
“I...don't know.” Raising his head, he focused on the colonel, not ready to see the street around him. What he had wrought. Wreth held the reins loosely, unconcerned by the brazen assault; the three mages behind him kept watch in different directions, their motions synchronized by a mentalist gestalt.
That age-worn face. He could not remember it being so self-satisfied back when he was admiring the man for standing up to the Crown Prince's policies. That glint of gold, once a puzzlement and now a sign. Those cold, cold eyes.
“What have you done to me?”
Wreth barked a laugh. “Me? My dear captain, I have had very little control of you. I was practically unaware of you until that slave incident. Imagine my surprise.”
“I can't. I...am...”
“Having a hard time, or so I've heard. I imagine it's from all the barriers the mentalists put up. Coming undone, are they? Best get back to your pet scryer.”
Rippling lights played on the other side of his eyelids when he blinked. Descending. “I don't understand why you...taunt me.” He felt drunk. He was not sure he truly knew what drunk felt like, but this must be it. “I have only ever served.”
“Yes, and more's the pity. You could have been useful. But they had to tamper. They had to allow you your name, the soft-hearted fools.”
“How...do you...”
“I'm privy to your file. We've been waiting for this. I must say, it disappoints. Now enough with the stammering; get on your horse and count your blessings that it stayed. Most even-tempered beast I've ever seen.”
No, he's not, he thought as he pulled himself into the saddle and fell in line with the colonel by reflex. He remembered getting the horse—a whole year of Havoc biting at him, trying to kick him, throw him, scrape him off on convenient trees. He had tried other horses but most would just stand stock still beneath him, as if paralyzed, and he hated to use spurs; he could not see the point in bloodying up a horse's sides when it likely had a reason not to move. Havoc at least would go, if not in the direction he wanted.
He had thought he'd earned his lancer's badge through sheer stubbornness. Through sticking to the beast like a burr—like he had done it all his life, even though he had never ridden before he came to the Crimson Army.
But now...
Now there were other faces behind his eyes.
He clung to the saddle-horn the whole way back, trusting Havoc to behave. Nearly ten years they had worked together, and twelve since he had come here in exile. Since he had...
Since he had...
—died.
No. Absolutely not. The proof was his hands clamped before him, the weight of his armor on his shoulders, the gust of his breath. He was here. He was alive. Something had torn inside his mind, spilling forth delusions, but he would not cater to them. He needed the Scryer to stitch him up, and then he would find a solution to this cult problem, to Bahlaer.
All would be well.
The stables loomed. He slid from Havoc automatically and was surprised to be caught by Houndmaster-Lieutenant Vrallek. He had not noticed the man following them. Vrallek's ruddy face contorted and he took Sarovy by the shoulder, shouted for someone to see to the horse, then started steering him up the steps. Another ruengriin walked in front of them to clear the way. Sarovy felt strangely like he was being smuggled.
Something was wrong with his right leg. He tried to look down, but Vrallek's jerking guidance made it difficult to
focus, and anyway there was no pain. All was well.
They passed figures in white armor heading out—a constant stream of them. Just looking at the pale filigree, at the flame-and-wings motif, made Sarovy's head swim. The floor unraveled and reached for him...
“Just a bit further, captain,” said Vrallek, then roared for the White Flames to make way.
Blank helms turned toward them, but space opened up and they slipped through. Down the short, wide entry corridor, Sarovy glimpsed the assembly hall in disarray, three portal-frames now standing among a milling crowd of White Flames, white-robes and mixed colors, and his own anxious men. The hall to the infirmary was bottle-necked, the floor slick.
From somewhere in there, Linciard shouted, “Gawkers back to your piking barracks or the yard! Curse it—we need two more beds, make room!”
“Up the stairs, sir,” muttered Vrallek, steering him that way. He did his stumbling best, and though he glimpsed a few of his men look his way, there were more specialists around him now. No outcry rose.
Past his office, past Benson's, to the conference room where he had once waited with Darilan Trevere while Magus Voorkei made contact with the Crown Prince. It had remained mostly undisturbed since then, its back wall still lined with scroll-cabinets and map-stands, but someone had recently pushed the long table to one side and the chairs to the back.
A single chair remained in the middle, with Scryer Mako waiting behind it. Magus Voorkei stood at her right shoulder. The walls were lined with specialists.
“What?” said Sarovy, then winced at the weakness of his voice.
Scryer Mako's gaze ran from his head down to his feet, then fixed on his right leg. He saw her hands fist under her elbows; her arms were crossed defensively, heart-shaped face a mask. “Sit, captain,” she said in a tone that brooked no argument.
Vrallek helped him to the chair. He could not fathom the ruengriin's solicitousness, but when he slumped down and stretched his legs out, he saw the problem. The shin- and thigh-guards were dented inward to a degree that indicated broken bones. He should not be walking.
He felt nothing.
The world shook—or was it his eyes playing tricks again? Someone was saying something. He could not focus. The floorboards peeled up around him like furling petals, then settled again. Vrallek's face swelled, pinched, lengthened to a fever-dream.
“Do it now,” he heard the Houndmaster say.
Hands clasped his head, thumbs tucked just behind his ears. A force pulled him back against the chair, bound his arms down. He did not struggle, too dizzy to try. She tilted his head back to meet her eyes.
—and he was falling, and—
Chapter 20 – Revelation
The Palace. His blue-clad knee, the Sapphire Eye on his fist.
Lifting his head slightly, he saw the base of the dais, the first few steps. Booted feet there, in the red and yellow and blue of the three armies. Further up, the slippered feet of a pair of mages or courtiers—one set black, one white.
Then the edge of the Throne.
He could feel the Emperor's stare like sunlight on his brow. From the corners of his eyes he glimpsed others kneeling: men and women in Sapphire uniform, dimly familiar. All of an age, more or less. Low twenties, prime of life.
“I am pleased to see so many distinguished and capable volunteers,” came a voice from on high. It sent a rapturous shudder down his spine, like Cortine's blessing but stronger. The voice of his master, his god. There was a casualness to it, an indolent sort of authority that he might have scorned if not for its source.
“You have all shown yourselves brilliant in my service, vicious as I require, and loyal to a fault. Know that regardless of the outcome this day, your kin will remember you as paragons of my Light, more than worthy to stand at my feet.”
He closed his eyes, breathing slowly. Imprinted on his mind was the last image of his wife, unsmiling, standing at the gate to the fortress as he left to answer the call.
“But first you must be tempered. Annealed of the corruptions of mortal flesh. You have endeavored purification through service, as the Light demands; now you will be redeemed through your sacrifice. My Light is with you all.
“Look upon me.”
He obeyed, and as the brilliance struck through him he saw all that he had been and done: his early childhood in the cold fortress, the blur of his family, the Youth Corps—feral self tamed and refined like all his people, taught control—and the Garnet Wars, wolf-blood on his blade, fletchings burning between his fingers. Maps, arguments, dueling his commander. Stratagems. Villages on fire. The officers' handbook. Riddishmen at his back, at his throat. Thwarting assassinations. Bringing the te'Vastrein clan to heel like the dogs they were.
Then Irsa. Irsa Vorena te'Vastrein-Sarovy.
The Light left him. He slumped, sweating, afterimages waltzing through his sight. Had he been rejected? Why? Not for her; the Emperor had arranged their marriage and those of many other border lords. For how he felt? Or had he not done enough?
“I am satisfied,” said the Emperor. “Now you shall be reborn.”
Beneath him, the floor unraveled, its filaments twining around his unresisting arms—around his shoulders, his neck, reaching to caress his dazed face. He was being drawn into the glossiness underneath, like a sea of liquid pearl, and all around him the others went the same. It seeped beneath his uniform, lapped at his chest, his chin. Flowed into his mouth and nose, sealed his eyes shut.
Fear flickered inside him like a diver caught on a rock, but the Light was everywhere. The Light was all. He need only yield.
Sinking, sinking...
Pulled.
He opened his eyes a crack, wanting to see. He always wanted to see. Shapes passed in the radiance, amorphous and soft, like a crowd of opaque bubbles in opalescent liquid—
No, not bubbles. A head there, hairless; an arm, smooth as a baby's. More, jumbled together, tangled in the thickening strands of white. Empty spaces in the honeycomb lattice peeled open as he passed, revealing chambers filled with radiance; others, closed, pulsed like heartbeats to illuminate their occupants, some somnolent, some struggling, some floating against their ceilings with the buoyancy of the dead.
Hundreds of them. Thousands.
Pulled—
Toward a cell.
Something flared within him. Irsa? Wings? A rebellious reflex overrode the rapture, and he twisted against the unseen tether. As the cell loomed close, he reached out—braced himself.
Hit the edge, dug his fingers into yielding softness. His legs jackknifed into the cell and were engulfed, benumbed, but his hands refused to surrender. Teeth gritted, mind tumbling the locks open. Not a blessing. A trap?
He crawled, snarling through the amniotic weight in his lungs. Fought. The cord yanked tight; it was in his gut now, and he felt his life reeling backward to that long first primal sleep, the glow from above trying to soothe him into submission.
No. No. This was not what he had been promised.
Holy Light, this is not—
He saw it then—a light in the depths, imprinting itself on his open eyes. Not the one from the Throne above, but a star in chains, hidden, drowning. It was speaking, but the fluid muffled everything. It was too far to reach...
He tried. A part of him knew that this was important. But the cord changed directions and more descended upon him, lashing around his throat and arms, waist, ankles. They pulled him back through the sea of parts, and then he was birthed again into the world, puking fluid onto the white floor, half-dissolved uniform plastered to his burning skin. Pins-and-needles riddled him, muscles trembling fitfully, the radiance from the Throne suddenly sour.
“Well now. It's not often we have a reject. What do we do with it?”
“Kill it and send it back,” said an unfamiliar voice. “Dead meat works just as well.”
“No. It had merit. Is there another option?” General Demathry, the long-time head of the Sapphire Eye.
A voice far clearer
, far closer than the other, said, “Sarisigi, of course.”
“Then do so.”
He struggled to rise but nothing responded. The fluid kept leaking from his mouth as if it had replaced his insides. No matter how much he coughed up, there was always more. Something was coming: the faint slap of bare feet on hard floor, incongruous in this place.
A gritty hand on his neck, thick tendrils wrapping around his throat. More on his shoulders, ribs. It lifted him with ease, twisted him to look up at it. Briefly it wore a man's face, one he had sketched in his papers—
—when?—
—but then it was a grey mass, its self-molding bulk pressing to him. Enfolding him. For a second time, tendrils forced into the corners of his mouth, into his sinuses, not slick and warm but rasping, abrading, and the spaces his coughing had emptied now filled with pain. Lights danced and smeared across his vision as it bent him, as its knobby head sprouted a furze of black hair, a blade-like nose, grey eyes—
No. You don't get to take my face. You don't get to win!
I will...not...allow...
He grasped at the face, the mask. Dug fingers in with spiteful fervor.
I am the hunter. I AM THE HUNTER AND I WILL NOT BE EATEN.
Like an echo, he felt nails cut into his cheek, his fingers doubling—some fading, others growing stronger. His twinned eyes locked on each other, mirrored into endless grey infinity, one set of pupils expanding as the other shrank.
—not be eaten—
No breath left. The light from below, fading.
The gap widening, too far for anything but wings to cross.
—Senket, guide my flight—
A leap.
A strike. Black pinspots—no, black talons lashing out, hooking into claylike flesh. Digging deep, drawing feathers away from the dead meat to fill the new home. Sharp beak tearing away resistance until there was one, just one, inside the shell.
His eyes cleared, and he took a heaving breath, overwhelmed by the sudden rush of senses. In his hands were blue scraps: empty clothes. He raised his head.
From the steps of the dais, his six masters stared. The old Crimson General, before Crown Prince Kelturin; the previous Gold General before Lynned. Sapphire General Demathry, much younger than now. The white-robed old man. The black-robed younger one.
The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) Page 61
