Another flash from below, and she blinked. There was no one down there and nothing to shoot at that spot, just…
…the beacon.
She cursed under her breath. Those ‘road markers’ were surveillance posts which reported any trace of magic back to Gold central. The Corvish shamans had blocked that one somehow but whatever they did had obviously worn off. Which meant—
A shimmer down the road caught her eye. A portal opening.
“Vykhe iskiti!” she heard a Corvishman shriek. Three black-fletched arrows flew straight for the portal only to incinerate a foot away.
“Pike me,” Lark said. Heart thumping, she reached back to count her arrows. Six left.
Withdraw to the Corvish and flee into the woods, or try to call the shadows?
She bit her lip, undecided. She hated the thought of leaving the Corvish to the Gold mages, but though her people had said they would be watching the situation, she did not think they could open an eiyenbridge big enough and strong enough to take everyone to safety. And she really did not want to stick around for an arcane massacre.
Then something else drew her eye.
Dark shapes in the sky.
Her blood ran cold. White wraiths, she thought. ‘Avoid at all costs’.
She looked toward the edge of the woods where Darilan had disappeared. He had told her that the forest wraiths and the flyers were enemies. That must be why Cob and Darilan had both fled that way. The Guardian would sense things like that.
So maybe the forest was safe…
“Can’t believe I’m thinking this,” she muttered, then peeked over the ledge.
The nearest carriage was stopped just close enough to leap atop. Most of the mages stood on this side, with the far side—the forest side—clear.
Above, the black shapes grew, their long stingers now visible and lashing in the air.
Lark took a deep breath, and whispered, “Eiyen shuum yeliis.” Shadow help me.
Then she sprang up, and as the mages took aim, she took a long stride to the edge and leapt off the rock.
The air sizzled behind her. She hit the carriage-top and fell into a roll, spikes of pain driving up her legs. Her feet slid off the other side and, dizzy but desperate, she pushed off entirely and fell to an awkward crouch in the road. A blast of magic took off the corner of the carriage and showered her with splinters, and she lurched to her feet, feeling fire in the tendons but knowing she could not hesitate.
The Corvish here fought the few guards on this side. She sprinted past them and slid down the embankment, mud and slush gathering on her breeches, arrows spilling from the quiver. A thornbush tangled her briefly but she fought free.
At the bottom of the embankment, she stood, panting, and looked to the sky. Through the trees she saw the black flyers descending, and from the other side of the road rose a sudden mob of dark squawking flecks—a mass of crows. They sped toward the flyers, and for a moment there was only chaos in the sky.
Lark patted herself over quickly, finding her quiver empty and three braids smouldering. Her bow was still intact. She unstrung it and packed slush into her hair, shivering, then backed away from the road. In only a glance, she spotted the tracks leading deeper into the woods.
Still praying under her breath, she turned and hobbled after them.
Chapter 26 – Gate of Earth
Darilan felt no aura, and only realized he had caught up with Cob when he saw him. He stopped in the shelter of a tree though he knew that Cob had seen him too.
The young man stood at the far side of a clearing no more than ten paces wide in any direction. At his feet sat the wolf, Arik, which bared its fangs when it saw Darilan. Cob himself looked haggard but determined, his dark face stony, his clothes torn and blood-speckled. Through a rip in his shirt, Darilan glimpsed the silvery mark of the wraith arrow.
It worried Darilan that he was not in the Guardian state.
Then Serindas pulsed in his hand, and he let the dagger urge him forward. The wolf rose to its feet, hackles up and quills visible, lips curled in a snarl.
“No,” said Cob. “Stand away.”
Darilan halted, but the words were not for him. The wolf’s snarl fell and its ears swiveled, and it looked up at Cob and whined. Cob shook his head and made a dismissing gesture, and with its tail tucked, the wolf slunk aside.
Grimacing, Darilan exhaled. He would almost rather fight the wolf. That might prompt the Guardian to come out—
“Darilan,” said Cob.
He sounded both stern and wistful, and it hurt the assassin’s heart. “I’m not here to talk,” he responded, fisting his fingers around Serindas.
“I know. But we’re gonna do it anyway.”
Jaw clenched, Darilan moved to the edge of the clearing. Cob’s eyes followed him, dark but human, not the Guardian’s black pits. Not even a scrap of its presence showed. It was maddening.
“What d'you want from me?" Cob said.
“I’m here to free you.”
"From the Golds? Like y'freed me from the Crimson Army?" Cob looked significantly toward Serindas.
Darilan resisted the urge to hide the seething dagger. If they were going to take this last moment to talk, then he would speak plainly. He did not expect another opportunity. "No. I need to kill you. There is no other way to separate you from the Dark."
“What if I don’t care about the Dark anymore?”
“You— What?"
"I've spoken wi' the Guardian."
Darilan stared at him, unable to form a coherent thought. All his fears congealed into a solid mass in his chest. He searched Cob's features again for a sign of Guardian manifestation, and his lank frame for that black armor, but saw nothing; whatever influenced him now was invisible and silent.
"I dunno if I believe it," Cob continued. "But it's not some horrible devourin' thing. I don't think it's even really Dark, not the way we talk about it. It's got people in it, memories, visions... My father. I-- I dunno what to think, except that everyone's been lyin' to me and I'm tired of it. I want some truth. Pikes, I don't even know if the Light I dedicated myself to in Kerrindryr is the same Light anyone else sees. So if you're jus' here to save me from the Guardian, you're too late."
Darilan shook his head slowly, not wanting to believe this. They had never spoken much about faith--he had not shared Cob’s reliance on the Imperial Light, nor did he want to talk about what he knew of it--but it had been obvious from the beginning of this assignment that the Light was the only thing holding the boy together. The thought that Cob could be seduced into the Dark had never crossed his mind. Possessed and forced there, yes. But going of his own volition?
"Cob, if anything is lying to you, it's--" he started.
“No. Y'don't get to say that," Cob snapped. "When I started havin' nightmares, you told me things were fine, but you knew, didn't you? Y'knew that what I thought was happenin' was true. All that time, you let the Guardian simmer inside of me, and instead of tellin' me, instead of lettin' me be cleansed, you pikin' chased me away. Then you came right after me! What is wrong with you?"
"I didn't want you to die."
"But now you're here to kill me!"
Darilan opened his mouth, then closed it, clenching his jaw in determination. Serindas tugged in his grip, tired of waiting for the violence, and he could not blame it. He wanted this over and done, all the worries ended one way or another. Shifting on his feet subtly, he evaluated the distance to Cob, but it was still too great; the boy would have plenty of time to react to his charge.
A wounded look replaced Cob's stony stare, as if he recognized Darilan's intentions. "Why?" he said quietly. "Why any of this? I thought we were friends. You didn’t have to kill Fendil, you could’ve jus’ told me the truth. You know I trusted you.”
“What could I have said? That you were possessed?” Unbidden, thoughts of their last few weeks in the army camp swam up in Darilan’s mind. The increasing frequency of Cob’s strange dreams, his own nervous dread at what
it might mean, the constant excuses required to let him cross paths with the slaves all the time. The tension that made him snap more and more often at Cob’s stupid comrades, particularly Weshker, until he had to force himself to withdraw and observe from afar. And through it all, the resurgence of the nagging fear that had haunted him since the infirmary, not dispelled at all by Enkhaelen’s reassurances and slowly refined into a paranoid blaze.
He doubted Cob realized how much he had been stalking him in the last days, or what else he had done. Cob's assignment to the River Gate had been his work, after all, through bribes and then the swift murder of the assigning officer. The Crimsons would never find the body; Darilan had enough influence among his fellow monsters to make it vanish as if it had never been.
And then there was Fendil.
Jas Fendil had been a necessary sacrifice. Because Cob was a good kid, a trusting kid, and he loved the Army despite all that it had done to him—despite the scars on his back from the whips, despite the brand on his arm. Because he was one of those people who clung ever tighter to the blade as it cut them, believing that they deserved what they got.
Darilan knew better. No one deserved what the Empire did to them.
But he could not say it. There were things he could not bear to explain to Cob. Not his bracer, which ached miserably on his arm, and not Serindas which throbbed with the need to kill and drink.
Most of all, not himself.
“You wouldn’t have believed me,” he continued. “Even though you knew. I didn’t have to prompt you to tell me about your dreams, Cob; you came to me with them, terrified that they meant you’d been touched by the Dark. But you didn’t want the truth, you wanted reassurance, so I gave it and you made yourself swallow it. If I’d told you that you were possessed, you would have stuck your fingers in your ears until I’d shouted myself hoarse.”
Cob scowled. Darilan liked that better than the wounded look. “You didn't even try."
"I just told you, I knew--"
"So you killed Fendil instead? That was your only other pikin' option?"
Darilan blinked, puzzled by the strain in Cob’s voice. “You’re not a civilian. You should be used to seeing people die.”
“Not my friends! Not because of me! I was a slave-worker, Darilan! I’ve only killed two people in my life, and one of them was already dead!”
Killed a few while you were the Guardian, Darilan thought, but doubted that Cob wanted to hear it.
“You should work on that,” he said instead, and nodded back the way he had come. “You left those two thralls alive, but I dealt with them for you.”
Cob’s face froze. “What?”
“It doesn’t matter. Bring the Guardian out and fight me.”
Challenge issued, Darilan tightened his grip on Serindas. One-on-one, he had little hope of taking the Great Spirit, but he would try. He had ruined everything for this last, razor-thin chance.
But Cob just stared at him. “Why?” he said.
“Stop asking questions.”
“Why did you chase me away?”
Darilan gritted his teeth. “Because I didn’t want to see you taken to the Imperial Palace, all right? I know what happens, and it’s not what you think. There is no altar, no purification ceremony, no exorcism. It would just eat you. And whatever it spat back out wouldn’t be you anymore; it would be something like me. I couldn’t let that happen.”
He hated to hear the plea in his own voice. Cob’s stony eyes held him with no sign of sympathy. They made him feel like a bug scrabbling in the dirt, something loathsome and alien.
Cob had never looked at him like that before. He had seen fear in that gaze, and anger, and unease, but never…
Never contempt.
“Who assigned you to me?” said Cob. His voice was flat and cold.
Darilan licked dry lips and shifted on his feet. He should not be telling these things. He should be doing what he had sworn he would do. But he could not help himself. These wounds had gone unhealed for too many years.
“My master,” he said. “My maker, the Inquisitor Archmagus. The Guardian trap was his idea.”
“Why?”
“To keep an eye on—“
“No, why you?”
Darilan opened his mouth, then stopped and considered it seriously. He had wondered this before. Even from the beginning of the assignment, he had felt it slipping away from him, and now five years down the road he had completely strayed from its stated intention. And yet he had never been replaced. His behavior had been questioned—by his superiors, by Cob’s camp-mates, by the General himself—but he had not been relieved of duty.
In his mind, he saw that first day again. Cob on the bench between two soldiers, bruised and hollow-eyed. Inquisitor Archmagus Enkhaelen gesturing with one black-gloved hand.
‘It requires a splinter from you, so that you may command him,’ the Archmagus had said. ‘It will be a part of his memories, like a person. Give it a name.’
A bad suspicion unfurled in Darilan’s gut. All this time, he thought he had been going behind the Archmagus’ back.
“Because I had a son,” he said slowly. “I lost him. The Archmagus knew. He told me to…give you a piece of my soul, like a little spy that would convince you to trust me. I named it after him.”
“Lerien,” Cob said.
Darilan swallowed. He remembered the fractured feeling when Enkhaelen’s icy hand had broken the splinter from him, and the way Cob’s eyes had flickered when the Archmagus pushed it into his forehead. He remembered the years in the quarry camp when he had struggled to be aloof while Cob followed him around like a puppy who had found the one person who would not kick him. He remembered listening to Cob’s rambling stories about the High Country and his best friend Lerien, and how he had to turn away sometimes to keep his expression in check.
He had been set up for this.
“Cob, he wants you free,” Darilan said, the realization filling his mind with urgency. “I don’t know why, but he didn’t want you in the Palace, he wanted you loose with the Guardian bound to you. He lied to me in the infirmary, he’s lied to the General-- He brought the Inquisition in on the day I chased you off, knowing that you were possessed, and did nothing about it. He must have known all along. That piking bastard, he’s playing another piking game with us—“
“I don’t care.”
Darilan stared at him. The young man’s face was still set like stone. “What?” Darilan said. “Don’t you see, he’ll be after you—“
“I don’t care.” Cob took a step forward, and Serindas twitched upward instinctively in Darilan’s grip. The assassin forced the blade back down. “You gave me my childhood friend,” Cob said, holding up a finger. “I guess I’m not surprised; you always kinda reminded me of him. And you were my friend too.” He lifted a second finger. “You always tried to protect me. I guess you still are, in some crazy way.
“But that’s the problem, Darilan. You’re pikin’ crazy.” He curled the second finger down. “You’re a killer. All right, so you’re an Army-trained killer jus’ doin’ your job. People draw swords on you and you stab them. Maybe I can understand that.
“But Fendil... Fendil was my friend. He was a skiver and a smart-mouth, but still a friend.”
Cob curled his first finger slightly, and looked hard at Darilan. “So I want you to tell me somethin’. And don’t think that I’m askin’ you to lie, because I’m not.
“Tell me if it was a mistake. Tell me if you’re sorry you killed him.”
Darilan stared at him, uncomprehending. “Of course not.”
A muscle jumped in Cob’s jaw. Without another word, he launched himself forward.
For a moment, shock kept Darilan still except for the blade, which lunged to meet Cob’s charge. At the last instant he managed to yank it aside and instead of catching Cob in the throat, it cut a shallow line across Cob's cheek right before the boy hit him in a full-force tackle. They slammed into the ground, the wet snow splashi
ng out around them. The cold rocks dug a path along Darilan's spine.
Cob was stronger than he remembered, all muscle and sinew, and wrapped arms around him as if bent on snapping his back. He fought for leverage and managed to plant a foot on Cob's hip and squeeze his knee in between them, all the while struggling to keep Serindas from hooking back and burying itself in Cob’s skull. As if oblivious to the weapon’s threat, Cob headbutted him full in the mouth, and he felt his lip split and his teeth squeak in their sockets. Hot blood washed down his throat.
He pushed his leg outward, forcing Cob’s body away, and managed to squirm his other leg in despite Cob's furious grappling. A twist, a shove, and he squeezed free, sliding through the slush then scrambling desperately to his feet.
Cob was already up, and the next hit drove him shoulder-first into a tree. The joint screamed, and the whole arm—bracer and all—went dead. He fell aside, and Cob caught him by the back of the doublet and slammed him into the tree again, his head impacting this time, sending up a spray of black stars. A callused hand latched around his throat and squeezed.
“I don’t care what the Guardian says about the Empire,” Cob growled, far too close. “I don’t care about Seals or any of that shit. You’re the reason I’m goin’ to the Dark.”
Choking, Darilan pushed out blindly with his good hand.
Too late, he felt Serindas turn in his grip.
Cob grunted, and suddenly the insistent hunger of the blade became lust. A cord of power thrummed through it, making it shiver in his hand as it drank.
Darilan panicked. No matter what he told himself, this was not what he had intended to do. He could not retract his arm; Serindas would not let him. It was locked to the wound now.
The Light of Kerrindryr (The War of Memory Cycle Book 1) Page 59
