“Come up, please, that I might see you,” said a woman’s voice, and cautiously the two emerged from the stairwell.
Though the chamber was square like the rest, its corners had been rounded with plaster, and rather than the intricate splay of sigils on the floor, it held only three concentric rings. They looked seamless, making Cob wonder how the Haarakash had gotten them into the tower at all.
Standing between the outer and second rings were six Haarakash in robes or dresses, two of them blindfolded. Cob recognized Magistrate Tarsem but the others were unfamiliar. On the far side of the center ring stood a tall, pale woman with sleek blood-red hair, her eyes heavy-lidded, the planes of her cheeks almost too fine to be human. Unlike the dark colors of the others, her robe was pure white, with a shallow slit neckline and high filigreed collar. Fine chains of reddish metal hung about her hips and clad her shoulders.
A chill went down Cob’s spine as he met her eyes. They too were red as blood, and pierced into him like knives.
“So you are the Guardian,” she said, her voice low and melodious but with a hint of harshness. A bite. “Interesting. I admit, I had expected something rather more…”
“Female?” Cob said sourly.
Fiora choked on a laugh.
The High Necromancer tapped her slender lips with an equally slender finger, smiling. “Burly, to be honest. The Guardian has a reputation for brawling, whereas you seem rather weedy. Perhaps you are simply young.”
“The reputation’s not wrong.”
“As you will. I am the High Necromancer of the Western Rim, Lita Aumros ered Sashyarana sa Kirsannuin. I am told that your name is ‘Cob’.”
“Yeah.”
“And you wish to have your bonds broken, your soul restored to its native state of freedom before this ‘Morshoc’ necromancer tampered with you?”
“Yeah. Please.”
“Then step forward and take your place within the center circle. Your companion may stay where she is.”
Fiora gave his hand an encouraging squeeze then let go. He looked down at her; she seemed uneasy, but beyond the obvious danger of the situation, he could not guess why. He started to ask, but she nudged him forward before he could.
“Go on,” she said, “you’ve been waiting for this. Don’t back down now.”
His spine stiffened. Of course I won’t, he thought, and strode to the first of the circles. He had been in such a place before, in the castle at Thynbell, and knew that the inset rings were for channeling magic. He made sure to step carefully over them.
The Haarakash watched as he picked his way to the center circle, blindfolded or bloodshot eyes following him fixedly. He did not like it, or the mounting tingle in the air as he progressed inward, and a sudden fear sprang into his mind.
What if this was a trap?
Wake up, he told the Guardian, but it did not stir.
He paused at the edge of the center circle, trying to quell the fear. The Trifolders wouldn’t send me here if they thought it was dangerous, he told himself, but remembered how the Cantorin ones had bickered about the Haarakash. Still, Vriene had reassured him and the Guardian had accepted it.
“Please, enter,” said the High Necromancer. He wondered why he was even considering trusting someone with the same powers as Morshoc. She was no less unsettling than him.
But he had come this far.
Cautiously, he stepped into the last ring. Opposite him, the High Necromancer did the same. When nothing untoward happened, he thought, Maybe this will be all right.
“Please lay down,” said the High Necromancer, indicating the flat cushions in the center of the circle.
Cob obeyed, telling himself it was just like with the Trifold. More comfortable, actually. Still, laying beneath the High Necromancer’s gaze made him tense. He did not like anyone having power over him.
And this kept happening with women. It was not the way the camp-tales had told him it would be.
“Relax, honored one,” said the High Necromancer soothingly.
“Can I ask somethin’ first?”
The High Necromancer tilted her head, ruddy hair sliding across her shoulder. “What is it?”
Cob nodded toward the nearest necromancer-assistant and said in a low voice, “Why’re some of ‘em blindfolded?”
She smiled. “So that their wraiths do not accidentally interfere with those of the others—particularly mine, as I must control this working. It is a common practice. Does it trouble you?”
“Uh…I guess not.”
“Then please, lay still. I shall begin.”
Reluctantly, Cob did so, and the High Necromancer raised her hands and began chanting in the swift, sibilant tongue of the wraiths. The other Haarakash took up the chant, and Cob glanced sidelong to see their hands raised likewise.
The tingle intensified, then contracted into distinct currents through his limbs. His heart fluttered uncomfortably as sparks jumped from his fingertips to the bare floor. The hem of the High Necromancer’s dress swirled and her long hair stirred in a phantom wind; beyond her, similar sparks hovered in a starry ring over the metal of the center circle.
Mesmerized, Cob realized that he could feel it as the mages connected with each other: the gathered strands of their power channeling through vein and sinew to fingertips, then traveling from body to body as if stitching together a tremendous tapestry. He was a part of the intricate working—a spider on the web for once, instead of a disruption—and in the mesh of the spell, he felt the mages draw energy with the ease of breath, inhaling it from the air itself. It was not the technique of the Gold mages, who had felt tight-fisted with their magic as if they handled backbiting snakes, but something more natural.
Then he sensed the outermost circle close, locking out the rest of the world.
The web expanded within the confines until he could feel every detail of the ritual area: the plaster beneath him and the thrumming circles in the floor, the mages at the six elemental points, the High Necromancer in her mantle of chains. He breathed in time with them. Gathering power from the outermost circle, the six assistants refined it and channeled it into the second ring, which hummed from the influx of power then closed like a shackle, cutting off his sense of them.
The High Necromancer made pushing motions and the current fled from Cob’s flesh, sparks bursting away to join the energy that flowed through the second ring. The air within the center circle became calm, neutral, and his heart regained its normal pace. Her pale face placid, her hair and gown stilling, the High Necromancer reversed her gestures into ones of gathering, and fine controlled threads of power arced from the second circle to activate the central.
Cob felt it seal, and then they were alone.
The High Necromancer let her hands fall, then knelt neatly at Cob’s side. “Do pardon the precautions,” she said, “but it is always dangerous to tamper with the workings of an unknown necromancer. Not only to you, but to myself and my aides as well. There are traps that one can place upon a soul—essence vipers, soul-hooks, even explosives. I can already see that you are carrying more than one rider.”
“Yeah,” Cob said quietly. “The Guardian and two splinters.”
“Would you like me to remove them?”
Cob closed his eyes, thinking of the white hawk—of Lerien in the mountains, laughing. Perched in the tree of black and silver. “Can y’tell which is which?”
“They were both placed by the same hand. One is smaller, but… It is difficult to express the shades of difference between them.”
“Then leave ‘em for now. They’re not important."
“As you say. Now, be still and I shall see about these bonds upon you.”
Cob exhaled slowly and told himself to relax. Her fingers alit upon his chest, drawing abstract patterns through the fabric of his tunic, and after a few long moments he opened his eyes and fixed his attention on the stained-glass ceiling so that his imagination would not run away with him. He knew he was blushing again and cursed h
imself repeatedly.
On the other side of the rose-patterned dome, something moved, small and dark. He focused on it. The hawk he had spotted on the roof’s edge?
Something hummed in his chest then, like the High Necromancer had plucked a lute-string. It made his guts resonate and he squirmed in discomfort until she pressed a hand to the center of his chest and said, “Cease.” That did not stop the resonance, but did make him exercise some control. Remembering all those cords and strands the Trifolders had tried to batter apart, he grimaced, realizing that this could take a while.
Drawing slow, deep breaths and forcing himself into stillness, he let the High Necromancer do her work.
Most of the time it felt like nothing but her hands, which were professionally clinical though still distracting, but at other times he felt like his teeth would rattle out of his skull if he did not clench them hard enough. The strands she flicked and tugged and examined seemed rooted in all different parts of his body, and the muscles jumped in time with her pull, terrifyingly like puppet strings. Even worse were the ones that plucked at his mind, raising waves of mixed emotion, disjointed memory and old nightmares. To combat them, he fixed his gaze on the dark splotch of the hawk behind the glass and tried to guess what it was doing.
He recalled his flight in the haelhene chains and the whirlwind of wings and claws that had assaulted his captors, and his brows furrowed slightly.
“You are fortunate,” murmured the High Necromancer, disrupting his focus. “There is nothing hidden within your soul beyond the three riders. However, I see that a previous attempt was made to break these bonds through brute force. Many of them are splintered and tangled and will be more difficult to remove. Should you speak with the perpetrators again, you must tell them not to repeat this mistake, lest they destroy their patients and themselves.”
“Mh,” said Cob.
“I shall proceed with the removal.”
She raised one hand, and small arcs of energy leapt from the second circle to the central, and from there to her fingertips, leaving fine pale filaments extending from them like needles. Cob looked away as she lowered her hand to his chest. Spots of shivering cold moved into and through him, flexing and converging to make the feel of one bond stand out like a stripe across his chest.
He tilted his head back, trying to distract himself again, and saw Fiora standing by the stairwell a pace or two behind the blindfolded female attendant. The six mages were still arrayed inside the outermost circle, managing the leaps and surges of power within the second.
The blindfolded attendant’s hands were moving. Slightly, subtly. She was very close to the edge of the outer circle.
And suddenly another memory rose: himself as Jeronek, standing on the parapet of the Pillar of the Sea, the Ravager Kuthra forming the Seal before him while a bloody-handed sorceress rose from the corpse of her former ally.
He opened his mouth, but hesitated, not sure what was real and what was paranoia.
Too late. The blindfolded attendant raised her hands and thrust them forward, and the outer ward sprang into visibility, a wall of red lightning. She pushed, and the energy parted like curtains. Stepping through, she moved toward the nearest of the six mages, a man without a blindfold who turned too late from his concentration on the second ring.
From her sash, she drew a wickedly hooked dagger and slashed his throat. He fell in silence.
Cob saw the mages turn toward the intruder. The two with blindfolds reached up to tear them off, and the assassin removed hers as well, exposing eyes that were not just ruddy but blood-filled and bleeding. She stared at the nearest clear-eyed mage and the man covered his face with his hands and made a horrid throttled sound, then collapsed and began to convulse.
The needles pulled free of Cob’s chest, and he looked up to see the High Necromancer rising. The assassin stared her way and the High Necromancer went rigid, her eyes welling with blood, but stayed steady. A sneer curved her fine lips.
“What is the meaning of this, Eitholaran?” she hissed. Her voice was strangely split, words echoed by a higher tone like the resonance of the crystal spire.
The assassin returned the sneer. In the outer circle, Magistrate Tarsem had also succumbed to convulsions, and the two that had been blindfolded turned to wrap bonds of red energy around the last mage standing. As they thrust her to the floor, the energy of the second ring—uncontrolled—began to leap and crackle in broad arcs.
“Sashyarana, sibling,” said the assassin, “you know what value this pitiful creature has to Ylwenna. Turn it over willingly and we will take you with us, back to the glorious embrace of the Isle. Back to the burning light and new forms, proper haelhene forms. Back to the scouring of this disgusting fleshy world.”
“You forget yourself, Eitholaran,” the High Necromancer said tersely. The bloody-eyed mages extended their hands to gather power from the leaping second ring and turn it against the central circle, but the High Necromancer set her delicately slippered feet and raised her arms and Cob felt the assault hit the central barrier like a patter of hot rain. “Submit to me and I will see you sent to the Carad Narath peacefully.”
“No. I tire of the Carad Narath like I tire of these mortal shackles,” the woman called Eitholaran snapped. “Eating, bleeding, shitting—and this shell, it wished to bear a spawn! We should not have to suffer the indignity of dwelling in these rotting cages, bent to the will of these animals! Devour your jailer like I have and let us return to our rightful place.”
The High Necromancer shook her head sharply. “I would not exchange these chains for those of the Isle. I thought you understood.”
“I nodded my shell’s head at your bleating, yes. You should know better than to trust such easy agreement.”
Again, the bloody-eyed mages turned their spells against the central circle. The High Necromancer braced herself but this time Cob felt the impact like a battering ram against a thin wall, and saw sparks jump from the inner ring. The three enemy Haarakash spread out to equidistant positions and began drawing power for another strike.
Through the wavering barrier, Cob saw Fiora by the stairs, her little utility knife drawn, a look of helpless horror on her face. Trapped in the center, he felt the same. The High Necromancer trembled above him, her fine features strained as she weathered the assaults. With the Guardian no more than a black stone in his chest, there was nothing he could do.
Then he heard the crack.
He looked up just as the stained-glass rose shattered.
Huge shards began their murderous descent. Instinctively, Cob grabbed the High Necromancer and yanked her off her feet, twisting as he did to pull a cushion up to shelter them. She made a sound of alarm, threads of power dissolving from her fingertips, but the raining glass punched straight through the top of the stressed central barrier and knifed down at them, as many pieces piercing the cushion as slid off to shatter on the floor. A few cut all the way through, gouging into Cob’s forearm and shoulder, but outside their circle he saw the other mages stagger and collapse as the glass hit them directly. One of the convulsing mages went still with a red petal in his chest, and one of the bloody-eyed men dropped to his knees and scrabbled at a jagged shard stuck in his back.
From the filigreed gap of the ceiling, the dark hawk dropped down to the corpse of the throat-slit mage, touched it with a claw, then keeled over.
The dead mage brushed the bird away with one glass-studded hand and rose to his feet.
“Hgkl,” he said, then frowned and reached up to pinch the gash in his throat closed. The flesh melded like putty. Absently he pulled a glass shard from his hand and sliced a line through his right eyebrow with it, then flicked it away.
“Ehhk,” he tried again, then spat a red wad onto the floor. “Ahem, ahem. Ah, better.” His voice was thick and ragged, barely human. “I understand the convenience of a good slit throat, but it is rather inconsiderate.”
Rising, the assassin who had started this snarled something in the wraith langu
age and started to gesture. The dead man made a casual backhand motion and she was whipped off her feet and slammed into the wall, leaving red smears on the plaster. She rebounded agilely, straightened, then for a moment stood there as if seizing.
Then her wrap-dress split—and not just the dress but the skin and muscle beneath, the bone, the viscera, in perfect slices as she unfolded. The spaces that should have been empty were filled with pinkish radiance. As the grotesquerie unfurled, it mirrored itself until it had dozens of limbs, dozens of fractured faces, all starting to weave energy.
With a bubbly sigh, the dead mage gave her a more directed, more vicious shove of energy. Plaster tore from the wall as she impacted again, revealing a webwork of red thorn branches embedded beneath the surface. They animated before she could brace herself, wrapping around every segment of her unfurled structure and reeling her in, and she shrieked and thrashed in futile multiplicity.
Cob stared, stomach roiling. As if unbothered, the dead mage turned away.
The High Necromancer squirmed out from Cob’s protection and stood as the dead man advanced upon them. The external barrier was too badly damaged to keep him out, but as he crossed the second ring, its coruscating energy lashed at him like so much lightning. Yet what had been designed to bar and destroy lost its purpose when it touched him, instead spiraling up his arms and across his shoulders like an embrace—and for a moment six wings of ethereal flame spread from his back, his eyes blazing with a terrible light.
Then they faded, and with them the second ring. Stepping forward, he reached out to tap the crumbling barrier of the center circle. Blue sparks sprang from his finger, mixing with the red light of the ward.
“Knock knock,” he said. “Kindly send out the boy, Sashyarana.”
“Enkhaelen,” she hissed, her bloody gaze flicking from the dead man to the downed Magistrate, to Cob and then back. “I thought these bonds looked familiar. Magistrate Tarsem told me it was some wretch named Morshoc.”
The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) Page 47
