She did not know why it was so—why Enkhaelen, with all his skill, would leave such an opening. Perhaps not even the Maker of Monsters could contest against the Trifold.
“And then there’s Cob,” she murmured. “The only reason I didn’t die when he killed me is that it was him doing it, not the Guardian. It’s painful to even be near him when it’s active. If it turns its full attention on me, unbound by Imperial magic…”
“Squish!” said Lark.
Dasira gave her a look.
Lark cleared her throat. “Um. A real tragedy. But like I said, we’re comrades now. They wouldn’t—“
“Don’t be an idiot. I’m not even counting our wraith friend.”
Behind them, Ilshenrir laughed a faint, whispery laugh. Lark shuddered.
“All I’m saying is—“ she started, but Dasira waved her off. Though Ilshenrir and Lark knew her identity, it gave her no comfort to divulge her weaknesses; perhaps they would understand that they had to keep the Trifolder and the Guardian at bay should she be badly injured, but she would not state it outright. She was not used to feeling so fragile.
At her side, Lark exhaled heavily. “All right, be that way. But just let me say I’m sorry for the way things turned out. In the forest, I mean.”
“Don’t be. It’s not as if we’re friends.”
The girl went blessedly silent, and Dasira turned her attention forward. The ground was now crisp with frost, and beyond the dark tree-trunks she could just glimpse open land—the southern Amandic hills, barren beneath their blanket of snow. It had been marks since they started walking, and her stomach grated with hunger, but she knew that this was no time to stop. They were near the edge of the wraiths’ barrier. The quicker they got out of the woods and away from it, the better.
She could not see the wolf; no doubt he was already outside, blending with the snow. Cob was distant too, his long legs and bad mood having driven him far ahead. For a moment she was irked with him. He had always been a man of strong emotions, and prone to violence when necessary, but otherwise he had kept strict control over himself. Now it seemed he had lost the reins of his temper.
Perhaps escaping the Army had banished his fear of reprisal. Perhaps the Guardian’s presence made him more prone to show his anger. Whatever it was, she did not like it, and if she could have slapped some self-control into him without revealing herself, she would have done so.
As it was, she felt like a wallflower. The future she had envisioned in their last battle—escaping together, just the two of them—had disintegrated into this. All these people with their dubious allegiances and motives, all capable of getting closer to him than she could.
And Enkhaelen, with his unknown designs and agents. Any one of these ‘comrades’ could be his tool.
‘Dasira.’
A shudder ran through her. The voice was in her right ear, shivery and faint, her earlobe tingling with cold fire. Her hand fell to Serindas’ hilt as she fought the urge to draw it and slice off the arcane stud.
‘Dasira,’ said Enkhaelen again, impatient.
It was as if he had heard her thinking. She knew he was no mentalist—he had a reputation for being mind-blind—but facts could not dispel the discomfort of his sudden contact. She glanced sidelong to Lark, wondering if the girl could hear him, but Lark had withdrawn a stride away and was hunched in her coat, looking irritable.
She glanced back to see that Ilshenrir had stopped several yards behind them, one hand outstretched to trace something on empty air.
‘Vedaceirra!’ the voice snapped.
She clenched her teeth and strayed further from Lark, and hissed, “Don’t call me that.”
‘Finally you answer. You’re in trouble.’ Enkhaelen’s voice had strengthened in the few yards since his first contact, and now she heard an odd echo in it—a gibberish echo like he was speaking two languages at once. Imperial and Gheshvan.
Translating, maybe, she thought. “Why? I’ve done your bidding.”
‘Not the problem. The problem is that I’m in a watchtower in Cantorin and I can see you.’
She stopped in her tracks. Watchtowers were how the Gold Army’s mages surveilled their territory, in combination with the beacons that lined every road and every border—
A yellow flash came from among the trees a dozen yards to the north.
Oh pike me, she thought. The wraiths' barrier is inside the tree line. I'm a fool.
Her eyes locked on Cob, still distant, and suddenly she could see nothing else. Could not move, could not think. Never before had she experienced such paralytic fear. Only when her hand fell by instinct to Serindas’ hilt did the red jolt of hunger break the vise.
“The watchers, do they see?” she stammered, forcing herself into a run.
‘The portals are already open. They’ve been waiting for this—not that they know what they’re up against. But get him back into the forest, Dasira, or—‘
She heard nothing else, for at that moment the air around Cob unfurled into tentacles of golden energy.
With a shriek, she launched herself down the slope, crushing frosted leaves and slush underfoot. Ahead, Fiora was unhooking her shield in slow motion, and she swept past the Trifolder girl and instantly forgot her, Serindas coming to her hand in a murderous blaze. Closer, closer, as the golden energy wound around Cob like a cocoon, his dark form barely visible as he crouched in self-defense—
Then the roar came like an avalanche all around her, shaking the trees like skeletal banners. A tidal wave of blackness arrested her stride and crushed her to the earth. Her heart fluttered, terrified yet pitifully glad, and beneath the immense pressure of the Guardian’s rage she felt herself passing out.
Then it withdrew, leaving her gasping. Through the tatters of the golden cocoon she saw Cob rise antlered and armored, the stick in his hand sprouting new growth. He loosed that punishing roar once more, then lowered his head and charged for the yellow-tabarded figures she glimpsed beyond the trees.
“No! Pike it, Cob!” she shouted after him, but he was already closing with them, and in those few moments the stick had become a leaf-clad staff. Fiora rushed past her to join the fray, sword and shield bared, chainmail coif up.
As Dasira struggled to her feet, every thread in her stolen body aching like fire, Lark came alongside her and hooked a hand under her arm. “Are you all right?” she said as she hauled her up. Though wide-eyed, she had unslung the bowstave from her back, and when Dasira shrugged her off, she immediately moved to string it.
“No, we have to—“
‘Dasira. I need you to do something for me.’
She flinched at Enkhaelen’s voice, dimly registering Lark staring at her. Ilshenrir flowed past them in a strange blur of green, grey and iridescence, and she moved to follow him, forcing her weak legs to obey. “What?” she snarled.
‘Destroy the beacon. I need to come through.’
She glanced at that glint of gold to the north. Her deep-seated hatred of Enkhaelen told her to deny him, but from the slashes of yellow light that showed through the trees, she knew that would be folly. There were mages out there—possibly dozens. Cob and Ilshenrir both had their powers, but she doubted they could stand up to such an assault.
Enkhaelen, though…
If he wanted the beacon down, it meant he needed anonymity.
There was only one reason for that.
She cut north quickly, ignoring Lark’s startled question. The beacon gleamed among a thick scrub of bushes; if not for its light, it would have been invisible. Painfully aware of the sound of conflict beyond her, she hacked into the bushes and reached for the crystal sphere with one hand.
An arc of pale energy jumped from it to her, locking every muscle. Then the bracer's threads tightened in her arm and clenched in her chest, and her heart restarted, sending a wave of enervating pain through her. Teeth gritted, she reached out with Serindas instead, burying it to the hilt in the crystal.
Energy crackled madly from the sphere,
but none of it passed the bar of Serindas’ hilt. The blade’s runes flared as it drank the power, and within moments the sphere disintegrated into dull shards, leaving Serindas abuzz in her hand, intoxicated but ravenous. It took furious effort to jam it back into its sheath.
“Done,” she said, and sprinted toward the fight.
Enkhaelen did not answer, but as she broke free of the screen of trees, a gust of bitterly cold charged air swept over her. She glimpsed six portals shredding like smoke beyond the ranks of Gold soldiers.
Then all her attention was taken by Cob. He stood in the center of the mob, thrashing about with the staff that now looked more like a young tree, and even discounting the wide branches of his antlers, he had grown. The Gold soldiers looked like children next to him, their pikes shattering off the black planes of his armor, and when the mages cast their ropes of energy, he swept them away with the tree. His feet were planted as if he had rooted in place.
They definitely don’t know what they’ve gotten into, she thought. But that won’t matter if we can’t escape.
From one direction, she saw Arik in monstrous wolfbeast-form tearing a path toward Cob. In another, Fiora had shield-bashed her way through a few ranks but now they were closing in on her. Ilshenrir and Lark were nowhere to be seen, but several soldiers had sprouted black-fletched arrows.
As Dasira advanced into the field, she caught a sudden acrid-honey scent, and fury lit her veins.
She rushed the men surrounding Fiora, drawing the plain knife from her boot-sheath. With the element of surprise, she cut a man’s throat from behind then grabbed his sword as he fell. Two men turned on her too slowly, one taking the sword to the neck as she leapt wildly at the other, her knees connecting with his breastplate and her dagger with his helm’s eye-slit. She bore him down beneath her and rolled off, wrenching the blade free as the pikes of more soldiers sliced the air over her head. Her sword skimmed past one man’s thigh-guard into his crotch, and he screamed high and horrible as she scrambled past.
The spilled blood added another layer to the nasty scent—one she recognized now. Senvraka and lagalaina working in tandem.
Her gaze flashed over the crowd, toward the mages stationed where the portals had evaporated, but though she saw Enkhaelen’s black-robed self draining the life from one hapless mage, she did not spot the abominations. Her bracer clamped harder on her arm, the spike pumping out adrenaline and combat toxins, and as her steps quickened, the soldiers seemed to slow. Their dull eyes barely followed her, the fear they should have felt crushed beneath the control of Annia’s kind.
Pikes and swords made obvious arcs in the air. She found herself grinning as she evaded them to cut a swath through the men, ducking and dancing and stabbing and slicing, leaving blades lodged in her victims only to snatch new ones from twitching hands. The high of combat had her in its grip; pain and threat were nothing, mere transitory troubles gone in the swipe of a blade. It was glorious to be in a healthy body after her declining years as Darilan.
Halfway to Fiora, she caught a whiff of obfuscating chemicals and just barely dodged the ice-runed tip of an akarriden rapier.
She turned on its wielder, forgetting the soldiers around her. He was a plain-faced man, cold-eyed and garbed like any Gold, but she knew him as one of her own. Aenkelagi—bodythief. Infiltrator-type. From the way the rapier tugged in his hand, she guessed he had just earned it.
Skittering back from his thrust, she dropped her stolen sword and drew Serindas again. This was no time for subtlety. At her mocking come-get-me gesture, his eyes narrowed and he lunged forward, the rapier leading him.
She moved smoothly with Serindas, in concord if not in control. The air filled with red and white sparks as the blades clashed.
Through the contact she felt the rapier’s aura, cruel against Serindas’ burning hunger. Behind her, the soldiers were bringing their pikes to bear, so she closed the distance with the bodythief to move him back. He sliced her arm with his offhand dagger and she hissed and slammed him bodily, nearly overbalancing him. He staggered aside then returned with the rapier, stabbing for her throat.
She dodged the thrust. A pike gashed across her side and tangled in her torn dress, and she severed the shaft with Serindas then hit the snow, rolling beneath three more pikes as she slashed for the bodythief's shins with both daggers. He danced back, the icy tip of his blade skimming across her left shoulder, and for a moment the muscles there went numb. Visions of spiky ice walls closed in on her as she lost her grip on her left-hand dagger.
The akarriden rapier came toward her again, and she lost her temper as well.
She lurched forward and aside, the blade’s tip passing close enough to her neck to frost the fine hairs. Her empty hand swept up to clamp on the rapier’s basket-hilt, dragging it down. Through the good leather of her glove, she felt her fingers freeze into a claw, but though the akarriden rapier’s presence assaulted her, she was callused to such things.
The bodythief could not pull away fast enough. His dagger came at her face, but Serindas cut through his rapier-arm first.
It came off at the elbow, and he screamed piercingly, inhumanly, his dagger sinking deep into her raised right arm. Threads twitched in the red gout of his stump. Dasira's own threads were already hard at work; when she twisted away, the dagger snapped from his grip and slid from her wound, and in an instant her severed muscles were resewn.
Grinning fiercely, she brought Serindas around and lunged. The bodythief barely managed a step back. Serindas took him in the belly and opened him side-to-side.
He fell before her, clutching at his guts, and she stepped in to ram Serindas through his forearm and bracer to finish the job. The pikemen approached and she sliced two pikes away, took shallow hits to the back and thigh, then dropped Serindas to yank the severed hand off the icy rapier. When her fingers closed around its hilt, her frozen hand thawed.
Its presence bucked in her head, infuriated, and she knew that its name was Alandian. Dodging another pike, she swept Serindas into her frostbitten hand and launched herself at the soldiers.
She had never wielded two akarriden blades before. It was thrilling. She felt them snapping at each other in the back of her mind, but in her hands they moved easily, Alandian’s measured menace a good balance to Serindas’ endless hunger. Anything the rapier touched burned with frost; swords and pikes shattered, armor cracked, men shrieked as their flesh froze solid. Dasira used Alandian to parry and closed with her prey by habit to feed Serindas.
Only when she stepped within a boundary of stinging, nerve-wracking heat did she remember her task.
She looked up, trying to shake off the battle-madness. Fiora struggled ahead, thankfully too absorbed to notice her. The Trifolder girl’s overdress had been shredded by enemy blows, but the armor beneath rippled with a strange metallic light, and as she watched, a strike glanced off the chainmail as if it was solid steel. The girl’s sword was still clean, held at her side defensively, all her attention on forcing her way through the press toward Cob, and a wedge of empty space followed her as if no soldier dared go for her back. With some fierce squinting, Dasira just made out the shimmery outlines of two figures in the emptiness. Lark and Ilshenrir.
She opened her mouth to call to them, but then something hooked around her ankle and jerked her to a halt. She glanced down in surprise and found grass sprouting through the snow to lash around her legs, tight and tough as wires. All around her, soldiers cried out in alarm, and when she looked forward, her gaze locked with Cob’s.
Even from yards away, she could see the full blackness of his eyes and the awareness in them. Her heart clenched with despair.
Then the sky beyond Cob rippled away to reveal two pale wraiths on flat-bodied, leathery black flying creatures. They dipped low toward him, the hook-ended crystalline chains they bore hanging nearly to the ground.
In her ear, Enkhaelen said, ‘Shit! No!’
*****
Cob was breathing the black water, up to his
knees in phantom earth. From the moment the golden tendrils spun toward him, he had given himself over to the Guardian, and in that yielding he had found the stability and strength he had missed in the struggle by the caravan—no longer a tree rooted shallowly to the soil but a seed encased in immovable rock. The first flex of the Guardian’s power had broken the mages’ grip, and from that point he was free to do as he willed.
With his temper running hot, his will had been to fight.
He barely remembered crossing the field, could not recall how the stick had twisted to life in his hand. All he knew was the black, tidal fury that rose within him, the desire to strike these tainted toy soldiers from his path and bring down the spell-slingers that kept stinging him with their golden needles. It was nothing to move through the ranks; like blades of grass, they parted for him willingly or by force, and when he swept his arms out and saw a wide spray of leaves move before him, he was mildly surprised. He did not remember carrying a tree here.
It had no weight in his hands. The earth swelled under his feet, bursting with sudden life; his knowledge of the root-network raced further and further with every step, showing him human presences pinning down the landscape, arcane knives digging into the fabric of the world. When those magical pains gusted away, he felt relieved, though the tang of their dispersal was uncomfortably familiar. They had been trying to make a boundary around him, and now that boundary was gone.
Pikes broke against his stony skin. With the Guardian as his bulwark, metal no longer seemed to shake him, and between one swipe of his tree and the next, he concentrated on the pikes themselves. The nearest dead wood burst into leaf, and he heard oaths and cries of surprise as the sprung metal fittings scattered into the crowd. The soldiers were too armored for him to feel them properly—their heartbeats, their stress and fear muted by metallic resonance but even more so by the noxious scent he caught in their blood.
The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) Page 20
