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

by H. Anthe Davis

  Difficult with Cob constantly pushing her forward.

  Just get him out of the way, she thought. Finish him later.

  Only the mission matters.

  She advanced; he slashed; she parried. He backstepped, then came in again with a thrust. She feigned a block but moved into the blade instead, catching it between arm and side as it bit into the outermost threads, then clamped her left hand on his wrist. Her needles punched through his armor this time, sending weakening toxins into his blood.

  Serindas dove for his sword-arm but he caught her wrist in turn, arresting the red blade as it touched the armor. She felt the rot start eating at her Palace mass, but in her debilitating grip he couldn't twist the black sword, couldn't tear it out. Shifting forward, she clamped her foot-spurs on the bridge and forced her right arm down hard to keep his attention on Serindas.

  She could almost see him gritting his teeth under the helm, all his strength focused in his pulling shoulder and leading foot. Their stances overlapped just enough that neither had good leverage to finish the kill—nor could they retreat without giving the other an opening.

  So Dasira did neither.

  Instead, with a shift of her weight and a wrench of her hips, she pulled in response to Erevard's push and felt his back foot leave the ice. As his front one went up on tiptoe, he tried to fling himself away as he had before, but her low-slung frame and foot-spurs gave her the advantage, and with another mighty twist she sent his feet right over the edge. Her needles snapped off in his wrist as she released him, grabbing the black sword's quillons to keep it hers.

  He tried to hold on, but the toxin had done its work. The black blade slid barely an inch before his grip broke and he plunged into the pit.

  “Too bad,” she told the water that swallowed him. “Need more practice fighting short women.”

  As she unstuck the sword from her side, the rot in her gut arrested, damaged parts flaking away like ash. Black lightning raced from the hilt into her hand, then up her arm to collide with Serindas' red, but she smacked their flats together to forestall their duel. Chastised, Serindas fell quiet, and the new sword declared itself Reivus.

  She looked up just in time to see a light flare out from the direction of the dais.

  Instinctively she ducked and felt her clothes flash-dry in the wash of heat, her fair hair crisping. A roiling teakettle sound came from behind and she realized in horror that she'd just let it hit Cob. Without thinking, she lashed Reivus upward; if Serindas could absorb energy, then maybe this one could—

  The blade's scream tore through her nerves. Smoke poured off it, thick and noxious like a burning midden, and while it succeeded in scattering the beam of light, what she drew back as it lapsed no longer looked like a sword. Chunks of its surface had seared off to expose blackened bone beneath, in the fused, compressed shape of a human arm. As she stared, the fingers at the end spasmed, and the hilt jerked from her hand.

  She tried to catch after it, but not fast enough. It clinked off the edge of the bridge and tumbled away.

  “Son of a bitch,” she said.

  Ahead, some kind of swarm hit the Emperor, giving her a chance to glance at Cob. Though he looked unscathed, his dark aura had diminished and his mouth had closed, the black tide currently stemmed. His eyes were lightless, but she saw him blink once, ponderously.

  The bridge between them cracked, his side still frozen, hers melting.

  They were barely halfway across.

  She turned forward to see the Emperor scatter the crows and take aim at the Guardian. The walls, ceiling and floor had faded, their remnant radiance pouring toward the throne in six thick currents like the wings of the effigies of Light. In their wake, great patches of despoiled blackness spread with sickening speed. Even the ceiling was tainted; as she watched, two of the great ribs that supported the dome split apart to expose a knife of night sky

  Power gathered in the Emperor's arm. She shaded her eyes just in time, but the afterimage still branded itself on her vision: a diagonal line as wide as her thumb that stretched from the dais to where the Guardian had stood. The crows screamed a hoarse, hideous chorus as the body crumpled. An instant later, something like smoke or shadow fled upward, escaping through the hole in the ceiling.

  Her stomach dropped. No allies remained between her and the Emperor, and as she watched, the wraith swept down, snatched Prince Kelturin's sword, then shot out through the gap after the Guardian.

  Against all sanity, she charged forward, desperate to cross her side of the bridge before it broke. She couldn't survive a blazing shot, but if she was lucky, she could dodge it. If she wasn't, she'd at least have given Cob another moment. And if it went for Cob...

  She couldn't think of that.

  Her spurs dug hard into the fragile ice. Tracking the Emperor's gaze made it impossible to watch her step, but with each footfall she felt the bridge weakening, narrowing. She couldn't even see the end. As the radiance heightened, all vision fled, and she took one more stride, felt the ice give, and flung herself desperately ahead.

  Furnace-heat washed over her, and she was falling, falling—

  Something slammed into her chest. By reflex, she stabbed out with Serindas and felt it sink into solid floor, the edge jerking up into her armpit hard enough to strain her shoulder. Her feet kicked wildly, shredding strips from the tattered edge; one hit the melting remnant of a support-strut and knocked it loose.

  With all her might, she hauled herself up, only to watch as the Emperor raised his burning hand toward Cob and the remains of the bridge.

  *****

  Through the layers of gelid darkness, he'd watched the light come with a sense of welcome. This was what he'd wanted, after all. From the very start, he'd sought its scorching judgment to wash away the guilt he felt—for the man he'd killed, for his mother, and for all the others he'd harmed and failed.

  When it hit, though, it showed him nothing. It just burned.

  Water flashed to steam; cold gave way to searing fire. Even with his hand raised to shade his eyes, the brightness of the beam made sight impossible. Judgment lay in the Emperor's gaze, but he couldn't meet it through the glare.

  Desperate, he forced himself forward.

  The light did not resist him; it had no pressure, unlike the Void at his back. Protected by the barrier of his skin, the dark gateway had not closed, and he felt the emptiness there, still whispering.

  Quench the light.

  Break the Portal.

  Bring them down, bring them all down to us.

  He couldn't think enough to deny it, but neither could he fight his soul's need. World narrowing to the width of the beam, he took another step, and another. He had to reach the throne—had to see, no matter what it cost him.

  And if the Light and the Dark struck at each other through him, so be it.

  *****

  Enkhaelen grimaced as energy flooded out to power the Emperor's beam. The skin around the aperture was flaking, his arms and chest beginning to sear as the exposure infringed on his biological heat tolerance. Too much more and his fire-blood would take over, and they'd all be piked.

  Fortunately, he still had cards to play.

  Frequent distractions had allowed the metastatic blackness to creep to the very foot of the throne, and he reached for it now with the frayed resonance of his being. It was not under his control; that enchantment had been held by his corpse-body, and with its destruction, the binds upon the contagion's growth and virulence were gone.

  But it knew him. He had twisted it together from a thousand plagues and cancers, a thousand dying bodies and willing sacrifices, and though it had no real sentience, it recognized the taste of him and surged in his direction.

  Threads of blackness ran up the web-like material of the throne—first one, then ten, then hundreds, soaking up the ambient energy as they chewed through the bonds Geraad had weakened. With his arms still covering the Portal, they managed to get within six inches of its aperture before the punishing radia
nce boiled them away.

  That was enough.

  As blackness freed his face and flowed into his mouth to clear his jaws, he managed to turn his head enough to reach his right hand. Four centuries of nail-growth kept it tangled in the strands of the broken wall, but his teeth were sharp; a bite and a twist broke the first nail away in a brittle snap. He did the same for the second, then the third.

  At the corner of his eye, the sunbeam held strong. In any other situation, he would have been impressed by Cob's tenacity, but now it was just sand in a time-glass, running out.

  He couldn't reach the fourth finger, so he jerked his arm with all his strength and felt a tearing pain as the nail split down to the quick. If not for the remnants of his thread-gag, he would have screamed; it had been so long since he'd felt something beside the Portal's ache that he'd forgotten normal pain. Half the nail snapped in the next yank, but the other half came out at the root and his nerves shrieked their indignation.

  He ignored them and did the same for the fifth. He would not lose to petty details.

  And then his hand was free—his fingers atrophied to near uselessness, his forearm just skin and bone. But that didn't matter. He had no need to fight.

  Instead, he reached for the prism that glittered in Geraad's scorched palm.

  His twisted pose brought him up short. Grimacing, he relaxed his left arm to gain more reach, but that act revealed the Portal, which scoured away the black contagion that had freed him. As the white threads moved in to reinforce his bonds, he kicked furiously, managing to move himself half-off the throne before they could arrest him. His fingers scored bloody marks on the floor as he clawed for the prism.

  His fingers brushed its surface, and it tilted—away, right there yet still too far to grasp. Beyond it lay Geraad's slumped form, and though he told himself not to look, he couldn't help it. The mage's face was surprisingly pristine, with cheeks a bit scorched and eyes blood-filled but otherwise almost fine. From the ears back, though, everything was charcoal.

  Emotion clenched in his chest, but he willed it away. There was no time to be maudlin. If he didn't finish this, all the deaths he'd caused would be rendered pointless. He owed his victims a victory.

  But his left arm was piking stuck. So close and yet he couldn't—

  His eyes narrowed. Carefully, deliberately, he braced his right arm against the throne's base and then pulled—jerked—twisted until his left shoulder popped.

  Agony shot stripes across his vision, but he fell forward on another half-inch of straining tendon, just enough to clamp his fingertips on the prism. When he tried to pull himself upright, his dislocated shoulder refused, and so he hung there for a moment, marshaling his will, before raising the prism to his chest.

  It wasn't glass, for glass—like all terrestrial materials—would have vaporized in the light. Instead, he'd spent nearly two centuries learning how to denature and recast wraith-crystal into a form that could withstand the concentrated gaze of the Outsider, and another few decades refining the internal conformation. This final product was composited from a dozen alternating wedges, its end cut into concave facets. With luck, the light that passed through would be scattered beyond use.

  He had no other way to stop it. Even his flesh was no barrier. And he no longer had the strength to unmake the Portal magically.

  If someone else didn't get here with the sword, he'd have to kill himself.

  Concentrating on his shaking hand, he slotted the prism into the hole in his chest.

  It fit. Instantly the light fractured, scattering rainbows across the floor below, and the heat cut off like a furnace door had been slammed. He twisted it deeper and smiled grimly as its edges severed two of the six extruding strands.

  Before him, the bright shape of the Emperor unraveled.

  *****

  Cob could see his arm cast in shadow against the glare, but he no longer felt it. Smoke drifted lazily before his face, stinking of seared flesh; the robe smouldered across his chest, the hair at his temples crackling and fuming. Within, the Void shuddered as its gateway narrowed.

  Then the beam broke.

  For a moment, he thought he'd gone blind. But the blankness thinned, revealing the dark blotch of his hand and, beyond, a landscape of vertiginous swirls and smeared colors. When he blinked, his eyelids grated over eyes too dry to water.

  No, he tried to say, but his lips cracked at the motion. His tongue felt like a leather tab. The Void still filled his innards with cold, but the rest of him was seared tight. No, it's too soon. I haven't been cleansed.

  I'm still here.

  He tried to take another step, but his foot sank through slush into fracturing ice. Balance shot, he would have tumbled if not for the clawed hand that dragged him back.

  Arik, he thought.

  It wasn't a comfort, because he couldn't understand what he was seeing. Colors still swarmed the room, and there was no one on the dais where the Emperor had stood—just a collapsing white mass that had once held the shape of a man.

  A cry of denial caught in his throat. To have come this far, only to be cheated of his purification—

  To have come this far only to realize it was a trick. A lie. Nothing left to pin his battered loyalty on, or pretend could still redeem him. No god, no leader, no Emperor at all. Just a burning eye staring out from the center of the throne, blinded by the object that scattered its light in all directions.

  A shape slumped behind it, tangled in white cords. Enkhaelen.

  Kill! screamed the Void.

  There was a gap at his feet, dark water foaming up from the depths as if trying to reach him. Pieces of melted bridge sagged sideways or subsided into it, a broken archipelago. Yards away, the edge beckoned, but he had no strength to leap.

  The ice cracked.

  A furry arm hooked him off his feet, pulled back, then flung him bodily.

  He hit the floor on his burned side, the pain locking his muscles and making his heart stutter. Then numbness stole in, enough to distance him from his damaged flesh, and he struggled up in time to see Arik push off from the bridge himself.

  Too late. The ice crumbled beneath his clawed feet, sapping the strength of his leap, and he disappeared below the edge with a terrified yelp.

  The sight smacked away Cob's inertia. He tried to reach out with the Void like he had with the Guardian, but all that did was increase its invasion. He couldn't feel the ice or the dark water or the things that seethed within it; he could hardly feel his feet.

  “Cob!” snapped Dasira nearby, and he looked over to see her squared off against a few persistent White Flames.

  At her heels lay the silver sword.

  He didn't want to turn from where Arik had fallen, but it was the only choice. Above, four blazing strands ran out from a kaleidoscopic center to create patches of insanity on the dais. Writhing facsimiles of body-parts rose—a hand here, an arm there, a portion of a face, a leg—as the Emperor struggled to reconstitute himself, only to lose cohesion.

  At the heart of it all, Enkhaelen grasped for something on the dais floor.

  He didn't need the Void to goad him onward. Oblivion was the only answer to a menace like that. Kill him—

  Suck the soul from his corpse. Extinguish the Ravager. Quench it all.

  He moved forward as if pulled. His good hand found the hilt of the silver sword and hefted it, eyes never wavering from the spot of light. Dasira moved into his shadow to take on the White Flames coming from the other side—not many, but enough to make her grunt with effort, her blade leaving a murderous trail in its wake.

  The first step trembled under his foot. There was a softness to the white material like walking on cushions, and he noted spots where blackness had eaten through the fibrous interior to expose raw stone. Further up, two cocoons bulged subtly beneath the surface.

  He couldn't think about them. The silver sword hung ungainly in his hand, half-melted, and as he ascended, he felt the Void's doorway narrow—taking his numbness with it. A
blazing thread twisted toward him to extrude fingers as long as his arm, but he staggered past their slow growth and they closed on nothing.

  Enkhaelen looked up as he crested the last step, eyes like holes in his wasted face. He was stretched far past the edge of the throne, his left arm horribly dislocated but half-trapped in the Palace stuff, his right arm clawing at the floor. Before him lay a familiar green-robed body; a few inches from his hand was a knife.

  Catching the necromancer's shoulder, Cob hauled him upright and recoiled before the free hand could grasp him. Enkhaelen slumped back against the throne, panting; he seemed past resistance, but Cob kept his distance as he hefted the sword. It was too heavy for one hand, so with effort he forced his burnt fingers around the hilt too. Adrenaline was all that kept him moving, but that was fine. One blow and this would be over.

  As he raised the sword, his gaze fell to the concentric circles carved into the necromancer's chest. The Seals.

  'Kill me and they will snap back into position.'

  That was what he'd told the Outsider. That was why he had to die. But suddenly the snap took on a greater significance, and Cob saw in his mind's eye the aftermath of the Sealing. The sigils in the sky, the beam of power that had pulverized the Pillar of the Sea, the rise of the Rift, the sinking of Lisalhan. And more. Disasters that affected the world to this day.

  If they happened again—even in miniature—the death-toll would be staggering.

  Bring them all down, said the Void.

  He lowered the blade, aghast. He couldn't do it—but he had to. There was no other way to close the Portal. Enkhaelen had carved his spells into himself so that only his death would end them; now he sat on the throne as if waiting to be killed.

  “Is this what you want?” Cob asked. “What all of you want? Another lost age?”

  Enkhaelen made a horrible sound somewhere between a retch and a cough, and Cob glimpsed something blackish trapped behind his teeth, resisting his efforts to spit it out. His gaze, pained and weary, gave no answer.