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

by H. Anthe Davis

  And then—

  —freefall, heart in his throat, the image through the doorway no longer stone but stars that wheeled drunkenly through blackness, gravity a fine thread that could not keep him from rising like a kite from the chair—

  —then slamming into that soft force again, his guts trying to turn themselves inside out, his back smacking into the arm of the chair as reality pulled him down. The parcels slid into him, the crates knocked against his wards, and as the floor shuddered like a ship running aground, he felt it in his teeth, his balls, the space behind his eyes. That horrible snap of portal disjunction, reverberating through his unprepared flesh.

  Humans were not made for such things.

  Nor were offices. But the view outside the door showed snow-covered evergreens and rocky slopes, pale sky, grey ruins.

  Nearby, Tarren made a strangled sound, then doubled over and puked on the floor.

  Geraad clamped a hand over his mouth, but though he was used to portals, that long drawn-out crossing had already forced his guts up into his chest. He managed to gain his feet and stumble nearly to the door before the vomit rose, and Enkhaelen propelled him the rest of the way out.

  The energy in the doorway had thinned to a veil, and when he broke through, the cold hit him like a fist. He stumbled to one knee among the rocks and heaved his last meal out, and the scything wind stole the stink of it like a mercy. Tarren and Wydma stumbled out soon after, one green, the other pale, to lean heavily against the wall of their traveling chamber.

  Geraad looked back at it, blinking through queasy tears. The door-frame, which had been a handspan wide before, had been sheared away where the stakes split it, leaving them exposed in their settings like nails in splintered wood. That split continued in all directions, so that the walls looked roughly peeled. The ceiling was now a low domed roof, the floor a foundation resting on cracked slate, the sides curving into a circle. He remembered the twisting feeling as the chamber had separated itself from the rock of its birth, and it almost made him ill again.

  Rising shakily, he pushed the spoiled snow away from the entry with his boot, then applied a fistful of clean snow to his sweating brow and neck. It helped a bit.

  Beyond, old ruins stretched toward a high cliff with a notch of stairs running up it. Evergreens stood thick at the top, disguising anything beyond. The sky was occluded, the forest silent in all directions. Strangely familiar...

  “Everyone back in. I've cleaned,” said Enkhaelen. The disheveled threesome obeyed.

  An acid tang still hung in the air but the necromancer was already burning herbs to deal with it, one of the braziers ablaze. The floor by the couple's cushions held a fine patina of ash. Once they had all slouched back into their places, Enkhaelen gestured toward the entry with his burning herb-bundle and said, “So. I'm sure you're wondering why we're here. This is...not a refuge of mine, but close enough. The locals will help you if I don't return, just remember to drop my name frequently. Would that I could leave you in a city, but—“

  “Wait,” said Geraad, struck by a memory of the scrying mirror. “This looks like where we were tracking Cob and his friends. Before you returned with that arrow in you.”

  “The Garnet Mountains. My old home.” The necromancer gestured vaguely toward where the cliff would be. “Don't go up there. It's in ruins now, unstable, and one of my enemies has been here recently. He might return, but he shouldn't be able to bother you. Just don't leave the chamber unless necessary.”

  “Who is he?”

  “God of Nightmares. Vicious brat. But you're a mentalist. I've been told it's possible to block him out with your talents, so keep those mind-shields up on everyone.”

  Geraad nodded.

  “And I need you to reset your Sanctuary spell to here. Immediately. If I'm not back in four days, abandon this place; there's a portal-frame in that bottom chest with some pre-set destinations, so just set it up and go. Understood?”

  Geraad nodded again, more slowly.

  Enkhaelen favored him with a crooked smile. He had been distant since the start of this, but now he moved close and in his features Geraad read wryness and worry, excitement and fear. “If I don't return, all my books are yours,” he said. “All my trinkets, my tools. Some are still in storage, and I've left notes on how to get them out. Anything you're not willing to take, destroy. This chamber won't move without me and its protections won't last forever.

  “You two,” he said, looking to the metastatics, “you help and guard him. Obey him as if he were me.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “What are you going to do?” said Geraad, at a loss. He had never sought power, only comfort, and then only enough to suit his needs. The thought of all the tools and materials Enkhaelen must have packed away made his head swim.

  Enkhaelen's smile turned a shade warmer. “Don't be concerned. Just prepare. You're sensible; I trust you'll keep your head down and your wits together. Soon, your enemies will no longer exist, and if you can hide from mine, you'll live long and well.”

  His mouth went dry. My enemies? The Gold mages? What are you going to do?

  “One more thing,” said Enkhaelen, and retrieved the parcels from the desk. He pitched the grey-wrapped one to Tarren, the violet to Wydma, then handed the green one to Geraad. “A few personal selections. Didn't want you to have to rummage through my trinkets in a panic should you fall under threat.”

  At Enkhaelen's nod, Geraad undid the cords keeping the parcel together. The outside layer was a winter-weight robe stitched subtly with silver thread, its runes so neat and tiny that Geraad had to squint to decipher them. But his hands knew the shape of their energies: layer upon layer of regenerating wards, the magic already infused into the threads to maintain themselves rather than leech from Geraad. Enchantments against cold, against heat, and a few unfamiliar sigils at the collar—Gheshvan writing.

  Within, a set of silver armbands covered in more Gheshvan runes, which felt to his senses like an absorption ward and a vent. A notebook. A ring of keys. And a long knife in a sheath, enough energy humming within its amber hilt to kill a team of draft-hogs.

  He looked up at Enkhaelen, overwhelmed, and the necromancer smiled slightly. “Take care of yourself. I'm for the war.”

  “Wait,” said Geraad, rising. He still had so many questions, and these changes clenched an anxious fist around his heart. Under Enkhaelen's pale gaze, he tried to fit his thoughts together, but the first thing that came out was, “We don't even have a door.”

  “The barrier there will keep out trouble. If you must, you can put up an opaque field. You know how?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Sanctuary.”

  Mouth half-open, hand half-raised, Geraad stared into the empty spot where Enkhaelen had been. He almost couldn't believe it.

  “Not one for long goodbyes, our Maker,” said Tarren.

  Beyond the door-frame, the evergreens bowed their heads to the mountain wind; within, it was warm and there was food and drink and work to be done. Geraad's lips shaped the Sanctuary spell, but even if he declared it, he would go to his Master suite in Valent—not to the underground complex. He had never trusted Enkhaelen enough to reset it.

  He'll return. How can he not?

  Yet in his heart, Geraad Iskaen wasn't so sure.

  *****

  Enkhaelen reappeared at his tether-point in the laboratory and immediately removed the spell. It felt strange to be unbound after such a long time, but it was necessary.

  The other spells on the walls, ceiling and floor had already been drained away, either into his reservoir or back into the magma pool. Only the cooling-runes remained active to keep the great number of bodies in good repair.

  He scanned their ranks as he moved to the deactivated portal-frames. Over the decades he had spent down here, he had expanded his laboratory many times, so that what had once been a mere ten mortuary slabs were now two hundred. At times, even those had not been enough, like when his minions had delivered him
the Gold company that had tried to ambush Cob. He'd needed to discard most of his old specimens to have space for them.

  That inconvenience was now an opportunity.

  On the slabs were the hundred-and-ten-odd bodies he had selected from that batch, most of them soldiers. Before last night, they had lain open to the cool laboratory air, partially dissected; he had spent the evening and much of the morning finalizing his additions and stitching them back up, plus finding clothing. Each now had a bundle at the foot of its slab.

  It was time.

  With a gesture, he brought forth his puppeteer's wheel. Blue-white tendrils flowed across his back and shoulders, laced into intricate patterns down his arms, then collected at his fingers before separating into threads so fine as to be invisible. The wheel itself hung in stasis at his back, and he snapped his arms out to the sides to release its layers.

  Six blue imprints appeared at his shoulders: translucent images of his arms in three different poses, each holding a different section of the threads. He examined them with his arcane senses, then decided on the upraised right-armed layer. Moving his arm into position, he synchronized with it and collapsed the other layers down, leaving his left arm bare and his right covered in a mere third of its former strands.

  He canceled the stasis, allowing the wheel to begin its slow complex rotation, then twitched his fingers and smiled as twenty bodies jerked in response.

  For a few moments, he did diagnostics—each finger controlling four, sending him feedback from re-firing nerves to confirm that they were in operable condition. Once satisfied, he switched back to crowd-mode and began standing them up.

  They had all been positioned the same, and so moved as if choreographed, their soulless husks sitting up on elbows then swinging legs off the slab, sliding down, gaining balance and straightening. He had placed the garments the same as well, in the same order, so making them dress themselves was no difficult task. Bodies remembered their routines, and by keeping them on a loose rein, he allowed them to compensate for their own differences in height and build.

  Their garments had been pared down from what he had collected: tunics, breeches, underthings, boots. None of the weapons and armor these soldiers had worn in life, or their Gold insignias; just enough to cover the autopsy marks.

  With his free hand, Enkhaelen reached back to reactivate the portal-frame behind him. It remembered its last destination: a bare basement room that could have been anywhere. Once his puppets were all dressed, he tugged them toward it, and they obeyed.

  It took a bit of finesse to get them into single file, but he put them through until they were standing in ranks like mannequins, facing the far wall. From his pocket he extracted a string of black beads, examined it, then frowned and slung it over his shoulder before pulling out another. And another, and a fourth, fifth, sixth.

  “Always the last one,” he muttered. Bunching it up in his hand, he reached through the portal then clenched hard.

  The thin glass shells of the beads crunched against each other, releasing streams of dark smoke that streamed up from between his fingers to swirl together in a moaning, shivering mass. A twitch of the wheel made them separate, and they shot down the threads to seek their bodies.

  As the first corpse began to cough, its thread shuddering with the confusion of its reseated soul, Enkhaelen loosed them all. He wanted to watch—to see how well his spells had worked—but he couldn't afford such vanity.

  More coughed, and one lifted its head as if to look toward him, so he popped the portal.

  It took only a few moments' work to dismantle the frame and stuff it into one of his dimensional pockets. Then he triggered another arm of the puppeteer's wheel, pulled another subset of the Gold company to its feet, and delivered it to a destination of its own.

  And so for the third, and the fourth, and the fifth.

  Lastly, the lower left hand. He paused to dismantle the final portal-frame first; it wouldn't be necessary. Then he stood the corpses up and put them through a different routine, since robes required more effort than tunics and trousers.

  Gold robes. The same ones they had come in with.

  This was the delicate part. He had stripped mages' souls from their bodies before, but putting them back in was tricky, and the alterations he had made might prove troublesome. As he looked them over, their eyes glassy as they swayed on their feet, he wondered what he could have done with more preparation.

  But, considering that this had been an unexpected windfall, he was content with his work.

  Still holding them in place, he backed toward the door, which irised open in response to his proximity. A last glance showed him the laboratory bared to its bones, his office a mess of torn black rock, the casting-chamber scoured clean. With his free hand he snapped the last spells, and the cooling-runes went out, their faint ambient light dimming to nothing.

  In darkness lit only by his crackling wheel, he stepped across the threshold and released the last threads, crushing the last beads at the same time.

  As the door pinched shut, he heard the first gasps of awakening.

  Quickly he unmade the spell that animated the door, returning it to solid basalt. Then he ran up the hallway, canceling the lights in his wake. His prisoners would not follow; with the laboratory sealed, their only way out was to call Sanctuary or make a portal.

  Once the first one escaped, this would become a race against time.

  He sprinted past the dark cafeteria and gathering-rooms, past the halls to the dormitories, sweeping up the remnants of his magic as he went. His wheel had faded as its last threads were cut, still there but inert; he did not have time to fold it away. It lit his path until the orange radiance of the magma chamber overwhelmed its thin blue glow.

  Still at speed, he aimed for the balustrade that edged the out-thrust balcony and leapt atop it with birdlike ease. The heavy wards that protected the complex from the magma's heat and fumes tried to resist him, but he opened his channels and drank it in, ending the spells that had made this place habitable.

  A breath of Primal Fire rolled in around him, making the wards on his combat gear light up. He ignored them; his eyes were on the pylons that rose from the magma, their sides inscribed with the foot-deep runes that channeled the hot-spot's energy to the Citadel above. Without this vast power-source, the concentrated presence of the Citadel's magi would have turned the land around Valent to sand and dust long ago.

  Enkhaelen stamped his heels on the balustrade to trigger the runes in his boots, then used their force to spring across the thirty-yard gap. Thin ward-wings snapped out at the top of the arc to let him glide, and he landed near the pylon's peak, where a huge shard of pinkish wraith-crystal protruded from the shaped stone. He had stolen it from fallen Anlirindallora in the Corvish forest, along with many others—some of which were now tucked beneath his minions' robes, fused into their daggers.

  Bracing his feet, he pulled at the crystal, drawing off its heat and light to empower his efforts. His gloves smouldered even through their wards, and by the time he managed to free the crystal from its setting, several silver threads had vaporized. He balanced it at the edge of the pylon for a moment, wanting to keep it but aware he couldn't fit a two-foot-wide object through the opening of his dimensional pocket.

  “Pike it,” he muttered, and pushed it off to tumble into the magma. Just removing it would be good enough.

  Quicker now, he did the same to the other five, his leaps taking him further and further from the balcony. He had cut all of the sensory spells that had allowed him to track people through the complex, so did not know if the Gold mages were here or gone, but prudence said, Bet on gone and tailor your behavior appropriately.

  No time, no time.

  With the crystals removed, the equilibrium between magma pool and Citadel began to shift. How this would play out naturally, he did not know, and a part of him itched to step back and observe. But he had more to do—so much more.

  As the depowered pylons began to si
nk into the magma, he sketched a door in the air and said the words, his portal-anchor rings lighting up as they connected to the frame in his upstairs office. The air around him shimmered, clarified, and he stepped on through.

  *****

  In the glow of bobbing mage-lights, the remaining Gold-robes argued.

  Some of their brethren had called Sanctuary as soon as their eyes opened. Others had done so since, too unnerved by their surroundings to try to figure them out. Now there were only four, and Risca was determined that they all go as soon as possible.

  “But we need to understand what happened to us!” said Vauler, a hefty young man who had been pasty even before this. Though his deep-set eyes were frantic, he kept looking toward the slabs, not the blank doorless walls like the others.

  “It doesn't matter,” said Einla, his short friend. “We had a mission and we have to report back, not start a new investigation.”

  “You're not even curious?” said Feros, the most militant one. He kept clapping his hip as if expecting to find his sword there, but like all their gear, it was gone. “The rest of those pissing cowards I understand, but I thought you had some grit, Einla.”

  “Don't try to taunt him into this,” said Risca, crossing her arms tightly. “We don't know how long it's been, and I have no scrying tools. Wherever we are, we won't figure it out from the inside.”

  Feros scowled and gestured around. “Someone was obviously active here. Examining the place could give us the clues we need to find the perpetrator—“

  “We can always come back.”

  “I don't know,” said Vauler. “This place feels unstable. What if we can't?”

  “I'd punch you out and 'port you with me if you weren't the equivalent of three,” Einla muttered at him. Vauler looked wounded.

  “Look, I'll leave a tracer,” said Risca. “If our captor is gone, then they can't erase it. If they're not, then...just as well that we fled.”

  “The four of us can—“

  “What, Feros? Do what the twelve of us did, and get knocked out again?”