It's the only way.
Cob gritted his teeth. It was a lie—it had to be. Staring at the circles, he tried to remember. They'd already been there when Erosei arrived, inked and scarred deep into the flesh. It had taken a ritual to pull them open, and then filaments had come through, just like those that blazed at the edges of the kaleidoscope crystal.
Reaching out with the sword, he tried to cut one of the filaments, but it burned straight through the silver.
“How? How?” he shouted. The necromancer made a throat-slitting motion. “No! You opened the way, so show me how to close it!”
The necromancer cocked his head, then beckoned.
The Void urged him forward hungrily, and he hesitated, afraid of what they'd do to each other and to him. But Enkhaelen pointed at his eyes, so he cautiously bent his head toward his foe, to the Void's frustration.
Fever-hot fingertips touched his eyelids—
—and six wings bloomed from the necromancer's back, blazing white, stretched tight on a rack of titanic layered wheels that he knew on sight were the Seals. The marks on Enkhaelen's chest were just their tethers; the real ones radiated unearthly colors, each slipping in a different direction at a different speed with the substance of his soul stretched like tendons between them. Though he glowed near-white where he strained to hold them in check, the rest of him was a faded ghostly blue, like a flame about to die.
They all overlapped at the center of his chest, but though Cob saw the gap through which the Light came, he couldn't see what held it open.
He stepped back, shaking his head. If the vision was true, then Enkhaelen hadn't just scribed the Seals into his flesh—he'd bound them to his soul, which he shared with the Ravager. If he died, they might both be torn apart.
You have no responsibility toward the spirits.
“Shut up, Void,” he growled. He was still missing a piece, but he was running out of time. The sword felt like it had doubled in weight, and—
The sword.
Raising it, he set the melted tip to Enkhaelen's chest and watched a tracery of magic unfurl from the first circle and dissipate. Connected to it, the rest of the spell lit up: a web that crossed all six circles to hook into the hole and hold it open.
The Seals were on the spirit side, but the linchpin was here.
He knew what he had to do.
“Sorry,” he told Enkhaelen, then shifted his grip to the sword's blade, pommel pointing out like a hammer-head. An absent prayer, a wind-up, then he swung it hard—straight into the center of the necromancer's chest.
Its impact punched the prism through the hole, shattered the opening-spell and slammed Enkhaelen back against the throne, probably cracking a few ribs. A blast of heat and light came through the gap—but then it snapped shut, severing the remaining Palace strands.
The chamber went dark.
*****
At first, Dasira didn't understand what had happened. Her back was to the dais, her steps taking her in a defensive arc around it but never up, and like her, the White Flames she fought knew better than to cross that line. So when weakness hit her like a great hollow fist, she let out a cry and struggled to keep her feet.
But the opportunistic assault she expected never came. As the fist closed tight around her chest, she looked up to find the White Flames in the same straits, some reeling away, some crumpling, others clawing at their featureless helms.
The fist squeezed, and she gasped as every thread in her body delineated itself in fire. Her bracer convulsed, then emitted an acidic heat: the ichor of last resort. Her lungs hitched. There was no reason for it to come out, not with so much of her innards and musculature replaced by Palace fibers, unless—
She looked up at the dais and found it sagging like wet cloth, its component strands separating lifelessly, its surface dark. A faint scattered radiance remained in the walls, like confused fireflies trying to swarm; as she stared, they spilled across the slumping dais and into one of the cocoons, making it glow.
Then even that faded, leaving only the stars to glint through the holes in the roof.
“Cob—“ she started, but the ichor in her throat cut her voice off in a rasp. She fumbled with Serindas, trying to press it to her bracer—to steal its vitality no matter how little was left—but the piking thing wouldn't respond. All it did was pump ichor, and as she sank to one knee, she felt her heart jitter under its toxic load. She couldn't breathe, couldn't rise.
Her legs went dead. The blade dropped from her nerveless hand.
I should have known.
This was the penalty for what she was and what she had chosen. She was bound to the Palace and the Light, and where they went, she would be forced to go. Her time spent living at a distance had not made her immune, and Enkhaelen's patch-job—the one he'd warned her about—had only tied her more closely to the place of her rebirth.
Now that it was gone, nothing could sustain her.
No! I won't be taken! I can curl up in myself, resist, survive...
But the parts of her bracer that controlled her muscles had already deadened, leaving her powerless, and as her sensory threads frayed and died, she felt herself disconnect from it. For the first time in forty-five years, she did more than wear her body. She inhabited it.
Someone was coming. She heard the footfalls, the shaking timbre of a voice, but the sounds wouldn't connect. Her eyes had slumped closed, but she didn't need sight to recognize him. His arms were gentle as they wrapped around her.
Her lips wouldn't move.
I don't want to go, she told him anyway.
I wanted to follow you into the future. Into something better for both of us.
Cob, I'm sorry. You'll have to go without me.
Can you ever forgive—
*****
“Das? Dasira? No...come on, open your eyes, open your pikin' eyes! No! No, no, no! Darilan, curse you, don't you dare! Don't you—“
Chapter 36 – Severance
Lark didn't know how long she and Maevor walked, nor where they'd ended up. The radiance of the Imperial City filled her view, a labyrinth of walls and spires and balconies nearly indistinguishable in the night. The crowds had long vanished; she could still hear the priests' songs, but they were soft and sourceless, drifting like petals in the warm air.
Without warning, the light dimmed.
She stopped short in the middle of a set of alley stairs, alarmed. It hadn't gone out fully; lines of radiance still ran through the ground and sketched the central mass of the buildings like skeletal trees. As she watched, some of those retracted, withdrawing their power from the white walls to leave them dull and inert.
“Is this supposed to happen?” she said, looking to Maevor.
He raised his head, and in the muted ground-light she saw his eyes were wild, pupils blown wide. His mouth moved, but no words emerged.
Concerned, she moved closer, and grabbed his arm just as his legs unhinged. His dead weight nearly pulled her down, but she managed to keep him from cracking his skull on the stairs.
A moment later, they softened under her feet.
“What in pike's name?” she said as she lowered him. In the distance, the singing had stopped, the night now punctuated by shouts. Concerned, she scanned the dim skyline until she spotted a brighter area—blocked from view by walls but painting the night with its glow. A few glints of brightness rose from it like platinum needles.
“Palace is still lit up,” she told Maevor. He didn't answer, but fumbled at her bracing arms with hands like moth-wings.
As the cries picked up in number and volume, her suspicion became a hope: Cob and the others had won! But then the trees of brightness drained from the walls and the rooftops and bridges slumped, the windows gaping wider, and unease bloomed in her gut.
The remaining radiance pulled out from beneath her, and she felt Maevor spasm. His hands locked around her wrists with desperate strength.
“It's all right,” she said, but she knew it was a lie. If this man wa
s like Dasira, then he was full of those wormy white strands—the same stuff that made up the city around them. As it failed, apparently so did he.
Das... Oh no.
She'll be all right, Lark told herself. She's the toughest person I know.
Then the glow of the Palace disappeared.
Maevor gave a choking moan, spine arching against stairs so soft they indented beneath him. Two faint filaments still gleamed in the distance, but as the moments passed she saw them gutter like candle-flames and finally go out.
Something stung into her hand.
She tried to recoil, but Maevor's grip was like a vise. In the starlight, the white thread that stretched from his sleeve to her palm barely showed, only the darkness of her skin betraying it.
Wooziness invaded her, and she lurched upright in terror, thinking to stomp on him until he let go. She knew perfectly well what this was.
“Please,” he rasped.
The softened steps sank underfoot, making her fight for balance. Managing to plant a foot on his chest, she snapped, “Pike you. I tried to help and this is what you do?”
“Anchor...”
“I'm not a fool. I know how your stupid bracer works, and I won't let you take me. If I'm right, then your god has just been locked out, and you'll probably...”
She trailed off, suddenly struck by pity. He wasn't fighting her; his eyes had rolled up nearly all the way, chest heaving under her heel, and the few kicks and twitches he made were spasmodic, unintentional. Though the dizziness still weighed on her, it hadn't worsened, and his bracer remained in place under his sleeve.
“Anchor?” she echoed belatedly.
The cords stood out in his neck as he tried to scream or speak but found no air. In the distance, others screamed for him, or shouted in confusion or fear, and with a knot in her gut she dropped back to his side. The stinger buried deeper into her palm, making her curse through gritted teeth.
It felt like an eternity before the seizures stopped and his grip loosened. She extracted her un-spiked hand from his without struggle, and set the back of it to his cheek; he felt chilly, his breath coming harsh and shallow, eyes white-rimmed. With a pang, she remembered rescuing Rian as a newt, and how he'd bitten her arms in panic as she freed him from the rubble. Despite the difference, she felt a responsibility toward this man too.
“Is it over?” she said.
He blinked slowly, face slack with exhaustion and grief. A movement nearby made her jerk around, only to see the building beside them peel apart, large hanks of its wall-stuff slithering off like shed skin. In all directions, other structures were doing the same: bridges and balconies unraveling, spires collapsing inward, branched-out towers shearing off in soft silence. There was such a delicacy to the fall that Lark would have thought herself dreaming if not for the pain in her hand.
She wanted to drag Maevor upright, to run, but the stairs were too squishy to climb now, and anyway there was nowhere to go. So instead she huddled at his side as the walls curled away and the skyline melted, the city collapsing around them.
*****
A tremor passed through Captain Sarovy, through Messenger Cortine, through Colonel Wreth, as if they were connected. It passed through the men behind them too—the abominations and specialists in all their vulnerable power.
“Captain? Colonel?” said Houndmaster-Lieutenant Vrallek from his point in the tableau, sounding shaken.
Sarovy couldn't move. The tremor had taken root in his flesh, and it was all he could do to keep his hand clenched on the broken blade.
“Messenger, what is this?” said the colonel. Sarovy heard his horse snort, and the agitated clack of claws and horseshoes on paving stones—multiplied to dozens as the rest of the cavalry steeds caught wind of some danger. A thumping began inside the stables: stalls being kicked open, then hooves on the main door. Further away, the hounds bayed in panic.
Sarovy slanted his gaze toward his men. The lieutenants had moved into his periphery: Vrallek, Korr and Herrick, with Rallant slightly separate as if standing guard over battered Linciard. Every one of them was a mess—uniforms and ceremonial garb torn, faces bloodied, hair crisped or heavy with soot—and so were the rest of his company. Crossbow bolts stuck like quills from several indifferent ruengriin.
Duty demanded he tell them to stand down and leave him to his justified demise. But they weren't here for him; they were here for themselves, and he couldn't have been prouder. If this was Blaze Company's last stand, then—
All at once, the world went white.
He tried to open his mouth but he no longer had one. He hung pinioned in absolute brilliance, bodiless, bared to the core, and under the power of that glare he felt himself dissolving.
It didn't hurt. Within the radiance, he saw the phantasmal glory that had led him here, the punishing clarity that had pierced him as he knelt at the foot of the Throne. The presence and the force and the overwhelming will that had shaped him to this terrible purpose. It called to him with rhapsodic fervor, and for a moment he could believe that it loved him—that it would save him. That he would never be alone.
But the tether broke. The Light flew away on burning wings, leaving only darkness—
A scream shocked him back to the physical realm. His abhorrent body unhinged beneath him, joints forgetting what they were, limbs confused by their shape, and he grabbed at the nearest figure for support—Cortine—but Cortine was reeling back, clawing at his face. His eyes.
Then the screams were everywhere, torn from the throats of men and women and horses, and movement convulsed through the mage-lit night: the Tasgard steeds bucking as one, froth flying from their muzzles as they snapped their monstrous riders from their backs. Vrallek's agonized roar rose loudest, followed by Rallant's and Korr's almost musical keens and the voices of the three lagalaina—a dirge for the fleeing Light.
Sarovy collapsed, unable to control his flesh. The pins-and-needles came back in enervating shocks, like dying nerves flaring their last. In his head, a thousand voices babbled their terror, a thousand hands and faces struggling to emerge from the morass of himself—to be the mask worn at their final moment.
Within the maelstrom, a single point of stability tugged at him like an anchor. He forced his recalcitrant substance around it and felt its outline: metal wings, shivering crystal. Burning template.
With all his will, he forced himself into it.
His fingers delineated themselves, limned by the faint blue lines of the shaping magic. His arms became his again; his throat hollowed, his face carving itself sharp from the misshapen lump it had become. His skin rasped against the close cut of his uniform and the cinch of his belt. His feet felt a weird constriction; in his collapse, he had slumped half-out of his boots and now they were twisted, crimping his regrowing toes.
Slowly, ponderously, he pushed himself up. As his eyes regained focus, he saw a swath of downed figures in white armor, their horses dancing and jittering around them as if unsure where to step. Other horses milled at the outskirts: Blaze Company's, free now that they'd broken down the stable doors. The Tasgards had corralled the more skittish Ten-Skies as if aware they might flee.
Wreth lay only a few feet away, frothing and clutching his chest. On the other side, Cortine still screamed, fingers knuckle-deep in the sockets of his unraveling eyes. White shreds hung like cobwebs down his cheeks, and bloody streaks followed them as the priest clawed furiously at something buried in those hollows.
Had Sarovy a stomach, it might have revolted. As it was, he could barely comprehend the scene. Only when the mage-light overhead winked out did he realize that the whole street had gone dark, the colonel's mages thrown or fled. Beyond the burning garrison's glow, the shadows opened cold mouths full of steely teeth.
Boots scuffed nearby. He turned his head to see Linciard gaining his feet, Rallant now the one sprawled on the pavement. All the other specialists were down, the human soldiers standing confused and terrified among the bodies, but while Linciard looked
pale as a sheet, his expression was firm. He met Sarovy's eyes, then jerked his chin toward Colonel Wreth.
Sarovy's hand tightened around the hilt of his heirloom sword, and he nodded.
As they moved on him, Wreth seemed to come back to consciousness, his limbs jerking and then pressing to the ground in the agitated need to rise. The gold pendant at his throat no longer hid the chitinous pattern on his scalp or the razors of his ruengriin teeth, and as he staggered up, he snarled wide enough to show a second row behind the first.
Sarovy came in awkwardly, feet still crooked, and Wreth deflected his sword-strike with ease. Fueled by purpose, Sarovy didn't let that stop him. Wreth had made him murder one of his own men, but in the process had shown him exactly what he could do. Ignoring the colonel's retaliatory punch, he stepped close enough to hook an arm around the bastard's neck.
Roaring, Wreth bashed him, clawed him, tore strips from the spine of his uniform, but that meant nothing to the adaptive clay of his flesh. Even when teeth clamped hard on his forehead, it didn't matter; he had no skull for the ruengriin to crush.
That was the trick. No matter what his template said, he was not a man. He thought of himself as Sarovy, Trivestean, former archer, mediocre lancer—with all the strengths and weaknesses that entailed. Good draw-strength, light feet, quick wits; delicate build, easily overpowered or fatigued. He'd built himself around those limits, compensating carefully.
But the template only defined his body's shape. It was his mind—his history, his expectations—that had enforced the rest.
So he focused, forgetting the limits of Sarovy in favor of being the thing. And slowly, surely, he felt the bulkier colonel bend to the monstrous force of his grip. A gauntleted fist hammered at his head without effect, the dents smoothing away in instants.
The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) Page 108
