“My good ladies,” the Field Marshal said, his grin as wide as a canyon. “And my interesting new acquisition. You look well. Have you mended?”
“Uh, more or less, sir,” Weshker mumbled, rubbing at the light splint that still bound his right wrist. Nerice and Pendriel hadn't stepped out from behind him, and he felt exposed. “Itches a lot, but I'm told that's normal, sir.”
“Good, good.” The Field Marshal beckoned him forward, and Weshker looked at the space between them—at the rings of sigils—and swallowed, but obeyed. “I have heard your reports. Your spiritist talent is having difficulty manifesting?”
“I, uh...” Weshker halted when the Field Marshal raised his hand, and found himself at the center of the rings. His hackles went up. “Uh, I dunno, sir,” he said, “see, the crows only seem to come out to attack, and we dun want that, right sir? But I dunno what else they can do, sir, like when they're not out, sir, and I'm supposed t' look at people fer somethin' now and sometimes I kinda...not see things, sir, but see like that there's somethin' I can't see, right, and I think that's the crows doin' somethin' in my head but I never done this before, sir, so I—“
“Yes, yes,” said the Field Marshal, making a quelling motion. Weshker shut his mouth. “We've reviewed the men you identified. But you can't see anything at all?”
“No sir, jes' feel that I can't see it. I think maybe the brand is foxin' things up fer the crows, but I dun suppose there's anythin' yeh can do fer that. Sir.”
“Indeed not. Well...” The Field Marshal glanced to the mages, and it seemed to Weshker that something passed between them: another twist of his mind or his eyes, seeing-not-seeing a thread of communication. He blinked. “Well,” the Field Marshal repeated, “I'm afraid we've not much use for that outside the camp, and the camp itself won't matter soon. Search him.”
Weshker's hands went to his uniform jacket, under which his knives were hidden, but suddenly his limbs tightened and he couldn't move. The two mages stepped out from their place at the Field Marshal's side, the man trailing bright runes from his fingertips while the woman reached out to clasp Weshker's head in her hands. He flashed her a hopeful don't-hurt-me smile, which she ignored.
Needles drove into his mind, and he was falling.
His time with Blaze Company blurred by, voices and actions meshing, landscapes shifting in a dizzying whirl. Then the walls of the siege camp returned, and he fell backward through his freedom, through the Crown Prince's judgments in the gathering-hall, to a moment that echoed this one almost perfectly. Fingers in his mind, peeling his memories apart. A lady mentalist, and behind her a mage in black...
Several times, as if looped, the moments repeated themselves: the crow bursting from him to attack the intruding mentalist, the black-robed man catching it and snapping its neck, the murmur in Corvish: You will be useful.
He hadn't understood then, and he didn't now.
“Just the one contact, sir,” murmured the mentalist. “Nothing before or since, nor any tangential knowledge.”
“Feh. I need to get my hands on the mages, then. That mentalist or the ogre-blood—one of them has to know something of value. The entire company can't be useless...”
“Sir?”
“If you're certain of your results, then release him.”
“Yes sir.”
The needles left him and his limbs returned to his control. He rocked forward, woozy; this hadn't been as bad as that first time, but it still made him ache from the inside out.
“Specialist Weshker,” said the Field Marshal.
Weshker raised his head, startled to see the big man looming before him. He didn't quite come up to eye-level with the steel pectoral. “Yessir?”
Gloved hands clamped on his shoulders. He hadn't seen the man don them or draw down his sleeves, but now he was covered in white from collar to boots. A perfect Imperial. “Do you wish to retain your status as one of the favored, Specialist Weshker?” the Field Marshal intoned, his deep voice resonating through his grip and into Weshker's bones. “Do you wish to rise further and join the blessed?”
There was something hypnotic about the man's deep eyes. He found himself nodding—not thinking, really, but obeying the dim pressure in his head. The urge to do the easy, agreeable, painless thing.
“Your Dark spirits can not be divided from you, I fear, and so you can never bask in the full gaze of the Light. But you may still be purified. We will cage this Darkness so that it taints only the least portion of your soul, and purify the rest. Are you prepared?”
Weshker mumbled something—he wasn't sure what. He'd already lost track of the Field Marshal's words; they sounded too much like the religious blather he fell asleep to every time his handlers dragged him to the temple. It wasn't that he didn't believe; it just didn't seem to matter. The Light and Dark were too big and too removed from his messy little life for him to care.
“Strip.”
The hands released him and he blinked, head clearing just enough to comprehend the command. He opened his mouth—to question, to object, or maybe to laugh just in case this was all a big joke, not a nightmare about to crash in on him. But these weren't the joking types, and he didn't trust his voice for it.
He undid the buttons of his uniform jacket. He'd never been shy, and no one else was taking their breeches off so it was probably safe—though the little girl was still there, standing like a statue beside the desk. That made him uncomfortable.
The others watched him expectantly. He thought of the crows: those twisted, broken things. If they were the Darkness to be caged, would he stop seeing them?
Maybe that would be for the best. He felt ashamed every time they appeared, like he'd failed them somehow. Failed his people, even though he'd been the property of the Crimson Army for almost as long as he'd lived in Corvia. It wasn't fair of them to judge him for his imprisonment, his branding—all those punishments that hadn't been his fault
He shucked his jacket and knife-harness then squirmed from his undershirt. Briefly, as he tugged at his belt, he was aware of the scars on his stomach and chest: nothing concerted, just the evidence of a lifetime of small beat-downs. Over now?
Being blessed sounded good.
A hand fell to his neck as he straightened from pulling off his breeches. Nerice's, her nails nipping in lightly. Warmth and well-being flooded him. He tugged at his loin-wrap.
“Just a moment.” His hands stilled. “Seal the crows.”
The other mage moved in, a web of white light between his fingers, and pressed it to Weshker's shoulder. It seared like the original brand, and Weshker gritted his teeth and clenched his fists hard against the impulse to jerk away. Something struggled within him—in his chest first, then shifting sideways as if being dragged—until finally it was subsumed by the burn in his arm.
For a moment he felt guilty. Sanava would be furious with him. Probably she'd never speak to him again. But they both knew he'd never been much of a Corvishman, so maybe he'd find himself on the other side, in the Light.
And he could set her free, whether or not she'd have him. He could—
“Finish disrobing, face the altar and kneel.”
He did so, fixing his gaze on the altar. It stood just at the edge of the outermost circle, and staring up at it, he was dazzled by the reflections from the cut-glass wings. The former-infirmary temple had its own winged-light effigy, but with bronze and silver fittings, not gold—and somehow seeing it from among hundreds of other soldiers was not as imposing as being stared down by it alone. He wondered if it was true that the Light could see out through the radiant glass, or that words spoken to the effigy were taken straight to its ears.
His heart thrilled a little, skin prickling with nervous sweat. Will it...will it like me?
Heavy treads moved in behind him. He glanced around briefly to see Pendriel and Nerice now bracketing the door, the two mages back at the sides of the desk. Then a white cord fell past his face to hook around his neck.
He reache
d up in panic as it cinched tight, but the Field Marshal's voice boomed from above: “Touch it not. You are deeply stained by the Darkness. This leash is necessary to keep you from being a danger to us. If you do not fight, you will not be harmed.”
Weshker let his hands fall, though when the Field Marshal looped it around another time, he could not help his anxious whine. The foggy warmth still lingered and he felt heavy, torpid. Like he couldn't fight even if he tried.
“Gaze into the Light,” said the Field Marshal, and Weshker obeyed.
At first it was no different from before, the refractions of the glass and gilt impressive but inanimate. Then the Field Marshal began intoning some kind of prayer, and a new radiance flamed within the effigy, saturating the room.
The sigils around him kindled in answer. He started to look down at them but was jerked up by the hair, attention forced back to the flaming wings. Swallowing his protests, he squinted as the glow made his eyes water, dull spangles already dancing at the center of his vision.
Then the fire gripped him behind the eyes and he saw nothing else.
He felt things, though: crawling beneath the skin of his left arm, chewing at the bone, battering dark wings against his shoulder-blade. Crows like an infestation parasitizing his body, their struggles muffled by the new-forged bond but persistent, horrible.
And worse, the solid shape beneath his hands. The legs wrapped around his waist, the heat against his crotch. The writhing, rhythmic tension so like drowning...
A line of fire tightened around his throat, and he felt himself being pulled away. He tried to grip the shape—her—and felt flesh squeeze from between his fingers like clay, a too-familiar sensation that shot terror up his back. The legs were roots now, dragging at him, the heat going cold and dark and hungry, and as he was hauled up by the neck he managed to look down...
Her eyes black holes, her skin a pale varnish over rotten wood, breasts like mushroom caps breathing spores, the copper vines of her hair splayed across a black expanse of grave-dirt and bones...
No. Sanava's not like that. I don't know what this is, I don't understand...
Then he was yanked from her, and felt all those Dark things recoiling into his flesh—hiding from the Light in the only place they could. Black water filled his mouth and nostrils, welling up from deep inside. It tasted of grief and loneliness and fear.
The cord tightened again, cutting off its rise. Stars danced in his eyes.
“You see? The Darkness brings only suffering,” said a voice close to his ear. “These bestial desires, the demands of the wicked spirits, the rot and ruin that comes to all flesh—they exist because we give in to our weakness. We serve the wants of our bodies and are tainted by them, rather than transcending these wretched vessels and becoming one with our master. You feel it, yes? The corruption in your soul, the degradation of your true self?”
His skin felt afire, pain striating his scalp, and the Dark things writhed and clawed and kicked in his throat and belly, roots cramping his guts and gripping hard around his heart.
It hurts, it hurts...
“Ah, my High Priestess,” the voice intoned, and he focused enough to see a figure within the flames: pale, translucent, the radiance of the winged-light shining straight through it as it reached out with bright hands. He tried to rise to it, but the rot-woman hung heavy inside him and the crows thrashed in the cage of his arm as if they could turn him away.
A fiery hand clamped on the back of his neck, lifting him. Pushing him forward. “We are not born Darkened,” the voice said. “As children, we are drawn to the Light, enraptured by it. Our eyes are open to its vast glory. Yet there is a taint within all of us, for we come from tainted flesh, and if we do not fight to free ourselves from it, we can never join with the Light.
“You are not unsalvageable. You have lain with a Dark woman, but this is not strange, for women are, by nature, Dark. There is a hole within them, and as they mature, it grows until it hollows them out, leaving them vessels for corruption. All who lay with them are infected by it, and all they birth are tainted. Even those who have been purified can fall to their wiles.
“That is why we do this. The poison must be drawn and the desire ended. You cannot stand before our master's eye, and so you must expel your taint the way it came in—to fling it into the furnace of a purified vessel, a burning crucible. This will make you worthy of our purpose.”
Brought close, he saw the translucent shape no longer above him but on level, saw the hands reach out. Felt them on his face.
Small.
Remembered the little girl.
No. No, no...
His knee hit something solid. Marble. His hand fell from hovering near the cord, caught the edge of the altar then slid to find a bare leg—one his fingers could nearly close around. One that twitched at his touch, transmitting fear.
Planting his palms on the stone, he tried to push away, thinking, No no no no no...
The grip on his neck clenched, thick fingers digging into the muscle. At the same time, the cord contracted. Everything was fire. “Do not recoil, but embrace the Light through her,” came the voice like thunder. “This is for the good of your soul. Nerice!”
“I've already dosed him twice, sir, but he's been inoculated,” came a fainter voice. “It just won't stick.“
“Give him another. And you, mage, help him. I will not have fear keep him in the Dark.”
The itch that had been hidden by the fire came to the fore, crawling along the base of his skull. He tried to fight it but it was like being dragged through wet sand: nothing to grip, all the world slipping through his fingers as his body turned traitor. In desperation he scrabbled at the Dark things he could still feel inside, and felt them redouble their struggles. His left arm was his...
“Embrace the Light,” growled the voice, too close, “or else be cleansed in death.”
His heart quailed. Since being pulled from the ashes of his village, he had always been a coward, compliant and skittish and weak. But this—
Then needles sank into his shoulder, injecting molten lava to his veins, and he lost himself entirely. A hand trailed down his chest to direct the flow—down to where the Darkness had collected, aching to escape.
That part in him still said No, no, but he could not speak, and the nails bit in again, and the vise on his neck forced him forward, and there was the little shape beneath him. A haven, a blessing, glorious and bright.
And when they joined, he shattered.
*****
There were times, after that, when someone tried to wake him but he refused. There was a blanket, and a bed beneath him, and he wrapped himself in that pitiful armor and curled into a knot. His throat felt raw, his neck grooved by the white cord, and when his hand quested timorously downward he found himself sticky.
He wanted his knives so badly that he could feel them in his hands, but their phantom blades could not pierce his skin. And so he stayed where he was, silent and whipcord-tight.
But Nerice wouldn't go.
“The Field Marshal is not satisfied,” she said. “He is unsure if you have been fully cleansed. I'm to make sure the bonds on your Dark riders don't leak—to stress-test them, so to speak. Don't worry. I've been purified myself, though not enough to be a vessel.
“You should enjoy it while you can. Once your purification is verified, you'll be cut.”
He wanted to drown, to disappear, but no matter how perfectly he imagined it, he could not make the air flee his lungs. He could not get away.
And when she dug him from the blankets, her nails piercing through every layer he had woven around himself, he was too broken to resist.
*****
Captain Sarovy looked at the lieutenant's fledge, then to Linciard's strained face, and said, “Keep it.”
“But sir, I—“
“He ceded it. In the Sapphire Eye, we challenge for rank as often as we are promoted, and I will run my company the same. He ceded it, so it is yours.”
&
nbsp; “But I haven't been worthy. I went behind your back with Rallant. I couldn't tell you in time—“
Sarovy cut him off with a sharp gesture. They stood at the center of the small storage room where they had put the city's Houndmaster, Chelaith—or what was left of him. Delimbed, eviscerated but still breathing, the turncoat ruengriin lay swaddled on a cot, his skin stitched thickly with Messenger Cortine's white threads.
Cortine had only recently left, taking the rest of the crowd with him. Only Vrallek remained, arms crossed, leaning against the closed door. His starburst eyes were fixed on his fellow Houndmaster as if oblivious to the other two.
“You informed me when you could,” said Sarovy, “and now I know. Now I will take care. The Messenger, the colonel...” He shook his head. “I have to think on this.”
“What does the White Flame want with you, sir? Why do they keep trying to pike us?”
Sarovy opened his mouth to confess. Despite his failings, Linciard was his most trusted man, and deserved to know. No—all the men deserved to know. Secrets and lies were his commanders' ways, not his.
But he could barely credit it, no matter the evidence, and morale was bad enough already. It could wait. “They are not 'trying to pike us', lieutenant. They are doing their jobs.”
Linciard scowled. “What piking jobs are those? Cortine is trying to steal our injured away—you heard him. 'Converting' them at the Palace? What's that supposed to mean?”
The unraveling floor... “It is not my place to speculate.”
“We won't let him, right? I know he's a priest, but...”
“It is not for us to choose.”
“I don't like this.”
“We must focus on the cultist threat, lieutenant, not our own side.”
On the cot, Chelaith chuckled wetly. His once-handsome face had been ravaged as much by the loss of his illusion-pendant as from Vrallek's claws: cheeks deformed by chitinous plates, long hair stippled with fine needle-like spines. “The threat is all from your side,” he gargled. “You are not like them, captain. You would not still have me if you were. I see the marks of my Maker upon you. Your masters are not his friends, nor yours.”
The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) Page 64
