A low wave swept in to wash around the Ravager’s shins. The whip of lightning dissipated with a crackle. Undaunted, the Ravager advanced upon Erosei, and the moment his feet touched dry ground, the whip reappeared.
Blades came up. Whip struck down. Light and thunder raged across the beach.
Still circling, Cob shuddered with fury. The man who had killed Paol Cray, killed all of those guards, nearly killed Cob himself… There he was on a beach hundreds of years ago, doing exactly the same thing. A memory of him, acting out his evil over and over against Erosei’s futile attempts to kill him.
Tucking his wings tight, Cob dove for the helm. The memories could not see or hear him; they were mindless. Not real. Maybe he could break them somehow and shake Erosei from replaying the nightmare of his own death. Get some actual answers before the tendrils caught up—
The Ravager turned.
Cob froze in midair less than a yard away, his wings paralyzed at the start of their spread. Through the slits in the helm, two cold, pale eyes stared back at him. Beyond, Erosei gaped in shock.
The Ravager reached for Cob. He saw the talons that extended from the gauntleted fingers, the silver chasing on the armor, the feathers and scales—but most of all the easy malice that marked the curve of the man’s mouth under the sharp edge of the helm.
Then a shriek filled the world, and claws latched onto his small body. Wings pumped above him and he was torn free of the stasis, yanked into the air again. The Ravager shrank into the distance, still reaching after him as the white ringhawk hauled him skyward.
It did not release him until the island was a pinspot in the sea. By then his heart had ceased to hammer so terribly, and he felt chastised. He had assumed wrongly, and it had nearly cost him everything.
But this is my mind, he thought. How can he have power? Is he out there? In here?
The hawk made no answer, only flew ahead, and he followed it at a respectful distance. They seemed to have outrun the tendrils. Below, the sea was dark, and the sky remained clear. After a while, Cob managed to relax and just watched the hawk for his cues.
Here I am, still tagging along behind Lerien all these years later.
It was a fond thought. He had tried not to think about Kerrindryr in the years he had been gone. He did not want to remember his time in the quarry, or his all-too-short life as a free child on the mountains. But memories of his first and best friend had a way of cropping up regardless, and they were pleasant. They had none of the shadows that had fallen over those of his parents.
As he watched the hawk, he wondered what had become of the real Lerien.
He remembered glimpsing his friend’s face in the crowd when he and his mother were led through the village in chains. Casting aside where that memory would lead, he tried to think of what might have happened after he was gone.
Would his friend have defended him? The children of the village had always been hostile toward Cob, and taunted him when he went down with his father for supplies. The village was technically a part of the Low Country, and the villagers had no love for the high-mountain folk who resisted the Imperials by cutting bridges and attacking caravans—people like Cob’s father Dernyel. Cob had come to accept that his father was a traitor to Kerrindryr and the Empire, and that he had gotten what he had deserved.
But—
No, don’t think about it. Think about Lerien giving those kids a wallop for badmouthing you. He’d get disciplined, sure, but he’d stand his ground.
And he’d keep living. He’d have a family by now. He was a little older. Maybe a village leader some day, Light knows it was hard to get him to shut up.
Even though he had a beak now, Cob felt himself smiling ruefully. Ahead, the light gleamed off the hawk’s pristine feathers and he thought, A splinter of him. We never really parted. I wonder if he has a little piece of me in his mind, too.
He could just imagine that. A grumpy little Cob in the back of Lerien’s mind, telling him to beat up everyone.
Then a faint howl reached his ears, bringing his attention back to the flight.
The hawk banked on the wind and dipped downward, and he followed, staring at the landscape below. The dark sea had become dark woodland, mossy and hummocked and studded with great boulders. Soft mountains hunched in the distance, thick-pelted with trees.
On a rock in a green clearing, a black-armored figure ceased its long howl and waved. Cob turned toward it and saw the hawk turn the other way, tucking its shining wings before diving into the shadows of the woods.
“Down here!” the Guardian called, and Cob alit upon her gauntleted wrist.
He knew instantly that she was not human. She had the shape of one but her face, under the fall of mahogany-brown forelocks, was too lean, too feral. Predatory. Her eyes were pale and slanted, and when she grinned he saw her long sharp teeth.
There was something arresting about her gaze. He shifted anxiously but did not take flight.
“Finally,” she said, her voice warm and husky. “I wondered if I would ever meet you.”
You’re a wolf.
“I am.”
He fluffed his feathers nervously. How do I know? he thought. You don’t look much like one…
“The prey knows its hunter,” she said. “In here, you are aware. All humans sense the difference when we walk among them, but few can say why. They feel fear but they can not see the threat, so they tell themselves it is nothing. They think they must be nice, they must get along like a good herd. They smile at us, and we smile back, like this.”
She gave him a sweet, close-mouthed smile, masking her teeth.
You hunt people?
“We hunt prey. City prey, forest prey. It is the same.”
But people—
One gauntleted finger rose to shush his beak. Her pale eyes held him. “You are a young stag, Ko Vrin. You understand defending the herd. The wolf’s path must seem monstrous to you, but we have followed it since the schism of spirits. We cull for the sake of all. Our prey has always been ‘people’, as we are people—as the children of the Herd are people, and those of the Burrower, the Stalker, the Fleeting Step. They can not be left unculled simply because they think, for all creatures think.”
But…
Cob stopped before he could fully start. He was not here to bicker. Who are you? he asked instead.
“I am called Haurah.”
Why did you howl me down?
“I wished to meet you,” she said, seeming pleased. “You have done so well despite the bonds upon you. Brave, strong, protective—you are very much a child of the Stag.”
Cob ducked his head, unsure how to take the compliment. Then an armored finger stroked down the back of his feathered neck and he skittered aside and looked up quickly. She smiled down at him with an expression of simple happiness, incongruous on her feral face.
What are you doing?
“You are such a little bird! So cute. I have never had a little bird on my hand before.”
Cob fluffed his feathers indignantly, and her pale eyes brimmed with amusement. “Why are you not a stag, though?” she said. “You are much stronger in that blood. I am sure you would be lovely.”
Uh, Cob thought. Despite the covering of feathers, he felt sure he was blushing. Um. Flying is safer.
“Oh. I suppose,” she said. Her shoulders sagged with disappointment.
So…you just wanted to meet me?
Haurah shook her head and looked toward the woods, her expression sharpening. “Of course not. There are things you must know, and Erosei is a terrible guide. He and I, we should not have been Guardians. He was a child of metal at heart. A fighter, a killer. A vessel for the Ravager, not the Guardian. But since before Erosei’s time, the Ravager has held only one vessel.”
Morshoc. For four hundred years?
“Somewhat more.”
How is that possible?
“Unlike our Guardian, who enters and leaves our bodies at will, the Ravager rides its vessel until the vesse
l dies. And that one has not died. We fear that he may be immortal—that he has trapped the Ravager by its own chosen nature, never to be released.”
But I mean, how can he be immortal? Even spirits die, don’t they?
“If killed. He is more spirit than flesh, and takes on false shapes to protect himself. We have tried many times to end him, with bad results.”
Why is he fighting you?
“We do not know. The Ravager has always been…erratic.” She bared her teeth at the last word, half grin and half snarl. “In the beginning, it stole the bodies of caiohene. Outsiders. It drank their souls and learned their magic. Such knowledge was invaluable when we fought them, but they have withdrawn now—mostly. They hide from the humans, as do we.
“But still the Ravager seeks power. Always it used the magic for our cause—you saw Jeronek’s Kuthra upon the Pillar, creating the last of the Seals. The impact of the Sealing changed our world, causing the Rift beyond Varaku and striking Lisalhan into the sea, and it killed every one of the mages that had cast it. Every mage that knew how it had been made.
“Except the Ravager.
“In the ages since the Seals were made, there have been many attempts to break them. The forces from Outside pried at the edges of our protections, and from the inside, their secret minions did the same. But never could they truly grasp the shape and form of the Seals. Never could they pierce through with more than whispers.
“And for a time, we and the Ravager were at rest. The humans engaged in their petty conflicts but we stood aside, for we saw that they had learned the cost of too much power and no longer threatened the world. I suppose we grew apart.
“It was only when he unwove the first Seal that we realized something was wrong.”
And he opened all of them? Erosei said that the Seal of Water was the last.
Haurah shook her head slightly, frowning. “It was. He did. The Seal of Water is no longer branded upon the Pillar. But the Sealing itself—it remains. We do not know how, but though the Seals are open, they are not gone. And there is only one entry point from the Outside. Small, like a pinhole. Hidden.”
Is that why you were the Guardian? To find it?
Haurah smirked. “Yes. To think like the devious predator. To track him to his den. The Guardian is not made for such things—it reacts, defends. It has never known how to attack. I am an eater of man and beast, and should not have been blessed by the Guardian’s presence, but it needed my instinct. My pack.
“And so we hunted. We tracked the Ravager’s crooked path. We found him, changed in body but not in mind, and chased him through the Empire until he came to roost there.”
She pointed, and Cob turned to look.
In the distance, cupped by a wide valley, was a city that shone like ivory in the dark setting of forests. White walls and spires, white streets, white banners, white filigree of gates and flying buttresses all made a shape like a six-spoked wheel on the earth, the gaps filled with pools and parks and terraced gardens. Threads of white aqueduct and road sliced out from it, through the forest and up the hills in a delicate spiderweb.
At the center of the wheel stood a great domed palace with a shining spire arising from its pinnacle, six diaphanous wings extended from it to catch the light.
Cob’s heart stuck in his throat.
It’s Daecia City. The Imperial Palace.
“Yes,” said Haurah. “The nest of the self-proclaimed Emperor of Light. A proper place for the scion of air and fire.
“We thought to approach the place in the forms of humans, but once we had passed the gates, my packmates began to act…strangely. Staring at things that were not there, listening for sounds that I did not hear. The gardens fill the air with so many fragrances that I could not scent what was wrong with them, and the radiance made my eyes ache. Within me, the Guardian was perplexed, for though we were surrounded by trees and flowers and walked upon stone, she could not feel them—my pack-mates. As if they were part of a limb that had gone numb.
“And as we drew toward the Palace, I realized that the streets were empty. The gardens empty, the rooftops, the beautiful houses. No people, no birds, no lizards. Not even insects.
“When I turned to speak of this to my pack, they attacked me.”
Haurah shook her head grimly. “They could not harm me, for I carry the Guardian. I am stronger than any mortal pack. But they would not stop. My mate, my comrades… When I drew blood, I smelled the stink in it. I licked it from my claws and tasted corruption of a kind I had never known. I saw the madness in their clouding eyes, and knew that it would not be cleansed. They must be culled.
“I am only glad that I ordered my betas to stay behind with the cubs.
“And when it was done and I was alone, I heard the baying of hounds. I looked to the Palace and saw the gates flung wide, a flood of pallid creatures emerging, some with spears and some with nets. And I knew that if they caught me, the Guardian would never again roam the land.
“And so I ran, in disgrace and despair. And in the end, I came here—to this clearing—and I stood upon this rock to see if I had shaken my pursuit.
“But I had not.”
She turned, and on her gauntlet Cob found himself pointed toward the tree-line just below, where the hawk had vanished earlier. Through the shadows of the trees, he saw the familiar white figure emerging, its raptor-faced helm like a skull in the dark. In its left hand it held the coiled whip; in its right, the severed head of a massive wolf-like creature, jaw moving slowly as if searching for words.
Cob had no chance to stare. No sooner had he realized the head was still alive than Haurah flung him into the air. He struggled for lift and heard her scream in rage, the sound deepening to a bestial roar.
The hawk streaked past him and he followed it, heart pounding, the taste of fear metallic in his mouth. The clearing shrank away below, but from the corner of his eye he saw white strands unfurling from the wheel of the city and reaching down from the sky. As he mounted the air after the hawk, he knew that this time he would not escape easily.
Raindrops struck his back. A moment later, lightning crashed down in a blaze of heat and sound.
He nearly fell from the air in shock, but the bolt had not touched him. You’re fine, this is all in your mind, he thought, fighting panic. Half-blind, shaken, he felt something sting across his feathers and immediately tucked his wings and dove for safety.
A net of threads unfurled beneath him, white-on-white. He tried to veer away in shoulder-straining desperation, but it was too close. Then the air turned to fire behind him, and a hot hand of force and thunder thrust him free.
‘—can’t just interfere like that, sir,’ said a crackling voice in the sky.
‘Shut up, I almost had him.’
Another raging bolt, another swat of burning air. Cob tucked his wings close, no longer able to tell which way was up. Buffeted by thunder and pelted by rain like hard pellets, he fell through the storm in skips and jags, praying silently, not even sure that the god he followed would not prefer to deliver him into the webs.
And then, suddenly, a dark wall rose before him. He blinked, but it was real—a flat black cliff unmarred by the threads, with a tiny gap of deeper darkness in it. Below and above, the threads unreeled toward him as if they knew he might slip their grasp.
Or they’re herding me.
Even as he thought that, he flared his wings and swerved toward the gap. Shelter was shelter.
The threads bore down like closing jaws. Full sheets of them hung from the sky, bannering in the whipping wind, and from the earth they rose in snaky cords to clutch and snap at his heels. There was no more forest, no more clouds, only the whiteness and the wall and the storm, and as he angled for the gap, the world lit up once more in a tirade of lightning.
Nothing touched him. He tucked his wings again and sped like an arrow for the dark.
It was only when he was too close to swerve that he realized it was a curtain.
He hit it at
full speed, the breath blasting from his small body as oiled cloth wrapped him and then parted, sending him tumbling through. He hit a second curtain and then a woven rug, and for a long moment he just lay stunned, struggling to drag in air.
It tasted of fur and woodsmoke, water and stone, ozone from the storm that still crackled outside.
A familiar atmosphere. Nostalgic.
No.
He struggled against the tide of memory. Bitterness and laughter, soft lowland songs, the wail of the winter wind… All came back to him with the sense of being small and helpless to stop the terrible things that were to come. His eyes stung and his fingers curled on the rug—then, realizing that he had hands and arms again, he pushed himself up slowly to stare at the home he had left so long ago.
It was smaller than he remembered. A single chamber in the cliff-side, once natural but now chiseled round, with a hearth cut into one wall and a narrow age-worn passage in the other, just large enough for a child to crawl. Minimal furniture filled the rest of the space: the pallet-bed in the back, a few woven baskets, and the low table in the center of the room.
At the table sat the man who had died nine years ago—whose death had set him on this path.
Cob swallowed thickly. “Father,” he said.
Chapter 19 – Homecoming
Dernyel son of Rithmar raised his head to meet his son’s gaze. Like the other Guardians, he was armored, and just like in Cob’s memories he looked stern, his black eyes flinty, his long hair drawn back brutally tight in a High Countryman’s braid. Scars and weathering aged his face beyond its thirty years. Despite Dernyel’s neutral posture, Cob felt suddenly that more than any of the others, he was facing someone with power. Authority. Someone who thought he was in control.
That stoked his anger. Cob scrambled to his feet, head nearly brushing the low ceiling, and glared down at the man, his hands fisting convulsively at his sides. A thousand furious accusations tangled in his mind, born from nearly a decade of well-nurtured pain.
The Light of Kerrindryr (The War of Memory Cycle Book 1) Page 46
