Where she had smiled down at him, sadness and resolution in her eyes, and said, “Now you will fight for us.”
And backward—
The spirit-memories peeling away; all the faces and voices, all the power, the strength and confidence, the will and the blessing evaporating from his hands...
And pouring back into hers.
As he fell into his mother's skin, Cob choked. The Guardian was an iron band across his chest, trying to pull him out, but he held tight with hands nearly numb. She burned in his mind: young, stern, determined, devoted. A woman he'd never known.
And pregnant. He felt it beneath her heavy winter robe, beneath the hand she rested there—that second life, dreaming its innocent dreams.
“You don't have to give this up,” said his father, young himself and soft-faced, concerned. Beneath his own robe, he wore armor—real armor of metal strips riveted into leather, patterned like flowing water down his chest and along his arms. The silver sword hung at his hip like any soldier's.
“I won't carry my child into war,” came his mother's voice from around and within him. “But neither could I stand back, if I still hosted the Guardian. No, it is time for me to release her and seek the peace of my heart.”
“Liska, our mission—“
“Has moved beyond me. I am no longer the lone voice upon the mountains, nor do I wish to be. A stronger vessel must take up the fight.”
“You don't have to lead from the battle-lines. My love...” His father caught his mother's hands—so strange to feel this, to see those dark eyes looking up at him with care. “If you send the spirit away, she can never return to you. And if I— I want us to be together, even if it is in war. I don't want you to sacrifice this blessing if—“
“I do not sacrifice it,” she said, hands closing tight on his. “I give it as a gift.”
Instead of the outflow, he fell backward through the grey space of her life, cobwebbed by the Guardian's avoidance. Four years spent spying on the Imperial occupation of Kerrindryr and fighting it with water—snow and avalanche and blizzard. With stone—carving secret paths through the mountains from village to village, temple to temple. With wood—aiding the farmers and feeding the resistance through the long dark winters. With spear sometimes, and bow, and armor that granted the fleetness of a doe and the fury of a mother bear.
Four years of victories and losses. Of mages ever hunting her; of the Ravager nosing around the High Country, chasing her, threatening her. Of the warrior cults denying her access to the Muriae until she met that man—
—that beautiful man—
—and made her choice.
The years reeled around Cob, dizzying in their intensity. Silver spires and cold mountains, white trees rising in a river cleft, sunlit hillsides, laughter, screams. Burning villages, bloody slopes. Mirror-like faces in blue-lit chambers. The Guardian flowing from one to the other...
He tried to let go, but could no longer feel his fingers. Memories meshed, distorted—or perhaps surfaced from somewhere darker: his mother sobbing into her hands, inconsolable, then grappling at him with a jealous fervor in her eyes. The boy watching from atop a ridge, distant, unwelcoming. The first swell of power, the bark crackling into place over her hands, and then the crunch of bone beneath her knuckles—the satisfaction of it. The soldiers wracked by fever and frostbite, falling to her spear. Blood on her hands...
'Blood on my hands,' she hissed. 'Blood on my teeth. Blood in my mouth, on my skirts, on my thighs. Hands on my arms, on my ankles. The men. The men.'
Stop, he thought.
'The whips. The guard-towers. The quarry walls. Stone and wood, once my servants, now my captors. Dir Niul, why have you fled from me?'
Stop, mother!
'Ko Vrin, what have you done to me?'
Her hands on his head pried his face up to hers. She loomed above him in the night, black hair floating in a fibrous cloud, lips rimed with frost, and everything she touched went numb. Her legs twined with his, her dress engulfing him—devouring him—rejoining him with her...
'What have you done to me?' she whispered against his lips.
He saw himself reflected in her eyes: a child of twelve, bruised and bloodied and contemptuous, speaking of the Light. Praising it. And in him, the echo of his father, always gone. Pulled away by purpose, leaving her to rot.
Stop. Please, he thought.
She grinned at that, a soundless laugh parting her mouth. There was nothing inside it, only darkness.
The black water swelled Cob's lungs in answer. “No,” he gurgled through it. “Mother, stop. I didn't want— I didn't know—“
'You knew,' she whispered, black eyes reflecting the night. 'You saw, even then. And you became one of them. Like Dir Niul, running toward the war—like the men, their mouths full of scorn.'
“I—“
'And now you have seen the Guardian's true self. Coward, fool, neglector, abandoner. I prayed for its return—holy spire, I begged it to claim one of the slaves, the other women or you. It could not reenter me, but it could save us somehow.
'But no matter how I called, it never came. And then you spoke to me of the Light—' She spat the word like poison. 'My son, my legacy. My only inheritor, kissing the feet of the enemy. You could not understand—'
“I never knew you!” he shouted, trying to pull free of her hands, her swarming hair. It was like being underwater, no traction for his feet, no sense of gravity—barely an awareness of his body at all. No concept of where he ended and she began. “They separated us, locked you away, but even back when we were free, you never told me! You sent me out into the mountains with the goats, and stayed at home!”
'I called the spirits. I bade them watch you on the slopes. But I could not call them in the quarry; the Empire's magic was too strong. And you... You were my precious one, and you betrayed me.'
He shook his head vigorously. The blackness bled through his clenched teeth, through his nostrils and eyes. He wanted to stop it but there was no end. The deep well where he'd packed down all his hate and fear had ruptured; it filled his belly, his throat, his skin until he was no more than a thin membrane holding back the darkness, a barrier with a voice. Even that was failing. “I didn't—“
'I wove my own rope,' she breathed. 'Bloodied bedsheets and dress-rags, discarded cords and belts. All the things they left behind for us to clean up. I wove my rope and then I climbed the last height, thinking of you—'
“No! No!”
'Thinking of your father. Of the Guardian. How I would sleep in the Dark, and only wake when you were near.' Her mouth twisted in a parody of a smile, her fingers suddenly soft on his scalp, his spine. 'Time brought you all back to me in the end.'
He couldn't speak. Black ice clogged his veins, made his thoughts stick. Somewhere beyond her, something glowed, but he couldn't see—couldn't tear his eyes from hers. She pressed her brow to his, and he felt the barrier tremble.
Was it wrong to give up? To curl comfortably into her embrace? As the black sargassum closed in around them, he found himself strangely weightless—almost buoyant, her presence a faint pressure on him. Not quite equilibrium, but...
'Bring them down,' she whispered against his lips. 'They will join us, they will dance with us forever in the silent sea. Bring down all the lights and shadows, quench them, freeze them in our hearts. Eternal, unchanging, undying, ours.
'Begin with the Guardian.'
At its name, he felt the spirit suddenly like a tether in his gut, straining against her undertow. He grappled at it—whether to drag it down or to free himself, he wasn't sure—but at his touch, a flare of pain radiated out from it, delineating every muscle in stark relief. Separating him from the black mass of her. He spasmed helplessly, spine bending as the grip clenched tight in his stomach and yanked him up, up, through the dark foliage of fingers and weeds.
As he rose, something fell toward him: a figure, black-eyed, wide-mouthed. He raised his arms defensively and it mirrored him; he swung h
is feet up through the rushing water and felt them connect with it, sole to sole. Cold. Then he slammed into it like a bubble against ice, its reflected face a hollow mockery of his own.
Their foreheads touched, and he felt something flow from him to it—or it to him. He couldn't tell. Cracks scored the surface between them, widening with each new tug on his chain until, pressed flat to its riven surface, he saw the image grin.
Then it shattered, falling away from his brow as his antlers split through, the rest breaking against his chest and shins and thighs as he was pulled through. And there was light above, chasing the last of the black ribbons from his skin. Grey light over ruins.
He breached the surface with a choke, the brine still boiling from his mouth. Soft silt molded itself to his feet. Ahead, on the shore, stood two solemn figures. Dernyel and Liska.
“Go away,” he rasped. “Leave me alone.”
'Do not listen to the Dark,' said one.
'It lies,' intoned the other.
He couldn't tell which. They both sounded the same.
“Go away,” he said. “You're not even real. Just masks that the Guardian wears when it wants to manipulate me. Your souls are gone.”
'We need you to obey.'
'To serve us, not side with it.'
“No. I'm tired of this. I'm tired of—“
'You have a responsibility.'
He looked down, not wanting to be here—already missing the blissful emptiness. Beneath him, the water mirrored his face: normal, tired, crumpled with indecision. Somewhere down below, the Darkness awaited him, but for now there was only earth beneath his heels.
His eyes still stung. For years, he'd wrestled with his memory of that night: the rope swaying slowly in the rafters, the shadow on the floor. To hear it from her mouth—your fault—tipped the scales with a dreadful finality.
He wanted it all to stop. To reverse; to find some point where he could have changed things. Or, if that was impossible, to forget.
To sleep and never wake...
'This is not done, Ko Vrin.'
“Don't call me that,” he growled.
'You have to finish our work.'
'Kill the Ravager vessel.'
'Pull it down.'
'Quench it.'
He stared at them. He'd thought they'd spoken in the Guardian's voice—low and rich but sexless—but it sounded strange now. Echoing. And their words were wrong...
'Blot out the Light.'
'End the Empire.'
'Bring them down, bring them all down to me.'
He looked again to the water and saw his empty face staring back at him, mouth moving, words ringing in the still air. 'Bring them all and we will save them, we will keep them. Still and perfect, untouchable, unharmed and endless...'
Brine surged from his mouth. He tried to bite it back, swallow it down—no longer sure why it mattered, why he struggled at all. But it wouldn't stop. It forced apart his teeth, not just water but black fronds like seaweed pouring out from his throat, staining the clear water like a toxin.
He looked up to see his parents' figures distant, small. The shore had receded, leaving him knee-deep in the shallow sea, nothing between him and them but inky waves that seethed like snakes. No ruins, no fallen trees, no old debris.
Behind him, the great deep oceanic darkness.
Stubborn, defiant, he waded forward, but the weeds coiled thick around his shins and dragged at his heels. The seabed felt like broken glass, biting at him with every step; the cold sapped at him like never before. And from the shifting, rippling waters came the whispers, sourceless, endless:
come
join
stay
sleep
A black frond coiled around his hand. Delayed by weariness, he didn't snap it away until it had been drawn down and almost engulfed; even broken, the dark material clung for a while before falling off in single strands.
He couldn't look down or see that hollow face, couldn't look up without despairing at that unreachable shore. Finally, desperately, he closed his eyes and gripped his antlers with both hands, as if they could anchor him to reality—bring him home.
Something tore in his skull, like roots being pulled from rock.
A crack in the sky, a sudden light—
An itch in his head, burrowing into his mind—
Wings—
“Hold him up, hold him up!”
Hands on him. Gauntlets, agreeably solid. Whiteness. “He's having some kind of—“
“It's called a seizure. Keep him up, it's already passing.”
“What now?” boomed the Field Marshal's voice, distinct and dire. “If this is a trick...”
“Oh yes, my famed 'life-threatening brain-spasm' trick. Cob, are you in there? Cob?”
Something impacted his cheek sharply. His skin buzzed, eyes full of sparks, body heavy in the grip of his captors. The air came thinly to his lungs, his head a lead weight on the weary column of his neck.
“You call that a slap?” said the Field Marshal. “Limp-wristed little prick.”
“Stand back and be silent. Cob? Pike's sake, Cob, can you hear me?”
He felt the Guardian withdrawing from his limbs, collecting at his scar—hiding from both him and the magic that pinned it in place. Immediately his right arm began to itch, and he jerked at it, desperate to scratch. The gauntlets clamped tighter.
“Ah, so life remains after all,” said Enkhaelen. A few blinks and he regained enough sight to make out the necromancer's silhouette, the Field Marshal looming over his shoulder like a cliff.
“He's conscious?”
“Pupillary reaction is back, at least.” The necromancer passed a hand before his face, then nodded. “He's there.”
“And the Guardian?”
Enkhaelen's eyes narrowed slightly as if in thought. Behind him stood his blue twin, the same expression on his face. “It attempted to escape, which caused the seizure.”
“But it remains trapped? You, mages, report.”
“The bonds are unbroken, sir,” said an unfamiliar voice, “but that assurance is not absolute. We are no spiritists; we cannot see it, only—“
“Enkhaelen, you can see it, yes? Make it raise its antlers again.”
“I don't think it has the strength just now.”
“Then give it the strength!”
A moment's silence, during which a vicious little smile spread across Enkhaelen's face. He turned to regard the Field Marshal. “You want me to feed energy to the Guardian?”
The big man's face darkened at his mistake. “I— No. Not until we stand before the Throne.”
“You're certain? We still have some walking to do.”
Lifting his head slightly, Cob saw that it was true. Though the tunnel was gone, they stood now within a vast expanse like a white caldera, laced with lakes and bridges and delicate canals, low ornate buildings and distant towers. Ahead, the Imperial Palace rose in splendor like the brow of a crown, its great spires so high and fine that they seemed to disappear into the frozen sky. Its doors stood wide, admitting all manner of pilgrims, petitioners and servants into its vast heart.
The Field Marshal glared balefully at the necromancer. “Yes. I'm certain.”
“As you say.”
The procession resumed, but the necromancer's blue twin didn't move. His face had gone from thoughtful to resigned, and as Cob was pushed closer, he said, 'I'm sorry. You've become too dangerous to use. Guardian...'
Inside, he felt the spirit rise in response—flooding upward to the spot on his cheek where the splinter had pierced his bonds to get in. The phantasm's fingers entered that point, kindling a blue light and an all-too-familiar sense of attenuation.
Then the phantasm walked through him, bearing the Guardian away.
Chapter 32 – Midwinter Rites
Linciard raised his head from the bucket, swallowed, then grimaced and spat another bilious mouthful of saliva down with the rest. “Water?” he croaked.
A tin c
up intruded into his peripheral vision, and he took it. A heavy hand rested briefly on his head. “It should ease soon.” said Rallant. “I had to use too much to bypass the inoculation's resistance. But don't worry. It will be better next time.”
Wiping the sick sweat from his face with the back of his hand, Linciard gave no answer. The inoculation had made him queasy for an evening but this was full-on puking, plus constant sweats and tremors, wobbly vision and a persistent feeling of seasickness. Now he knew how the Brother Islanders had felt.
And beneath it all, a craving. The subtle knowledge that all these side-effects would vanish with another shot of that sweet venom.
He swished the water in his mouth, spat, then rose shakily, ignoring the throb in his stitched-up toes. The two of them were on the bunk-side of his office as always, the lantern on the folding side-table casting their paired shadows against the privacy screen. To look at those overlapping splotches of darkness, one might think that the men attached to them were close as well, but Rallant had stayed perched on the bed throughout Linciard's bout with the bucket.
Now, sharp fingernails traced the sweat-damp skin of his back and came to rest at the nape of his neck. “You're sure you'll last?” said the senvraka, very close.
It took all of Linciard's strength to shrug him off and step away. “I'll be fine,” he mumbled. “Nothing left in me.”
“Only we can't have you puking during the ceremony...”
“I know. I won't.”
“You're absolutely sure?”
“Are you concerned for me or for your piking reputation?” he said caustically as he flipped up the lid of his footlocker. His dress uniform was in there: new, crisp and tailored to fit during one of the few down-moments he'd had since arriving in Bahlaer. The lieutenant's fledges gleamed in silver thread on the shoulders and above the heart, making the jacket alone the most expensive thing he'd ever owned.
He hated the idea of wearing it now, but protocol demanded either a dress uniform or a worshiper's whites during the Midwinter ceremony—especially since tomorrow was Darkness Day. The temperate Illanic weather made it feel weird to be celebrating; he was used to seeing snow up to his eyebrows at this time of year.
The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) Page 96
