The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle)
Page 57
“Shaidaxi is Gheshvan too,” said Lark, trying to wrangle the bowls and the ladle. “At least the first part, shaidax. Means ‘shadow’. It's what some people call babies so Death can't find them before they’re old enough for a real name.”
“What, so if you don't have a name, you can't die?” said Cob, scratching his forearm.
“That's the theory, but in practice a shaidax-child comes to us—to Kherus Morgwi—if it dies. It's how the eiyets are made.”
He blinked for a moment, then shook his head. “So what, Enkhaelen’s secretly an ogre?”
“A baby ogre!”
That would explain his temper tantrums, thought Dasira, amused.
“Shadow, imagine an ogre necromancer though,” Lark continued with a shudder. “Huge muscular tusky fellow who can turn you inside-out with a touch.”
“Can ogres even do magic?” said Fiora. “I thought they were…dumb.”
Cob shook his head sharply. “Trust me, they’re smart as anyone, and that half-ogre kingdom of theirs, Gejara, that’s full to the brim with mages of all bloodlines. Pikin’ bastards, they used to raid Kerrindryr same as the Jernizen until the Empire stepped in.”
“All right, so maybe Enkhaelen is from Gejara,” said Lark, waggling a bowl at Cob until he took it. “Not that I know how it helps us…”
“He couldn’t be,” said Dasira, interested despite herself. She knew no Gheshvan and though she had thought fiercely on the subject of Enkhaelen before, it had always been about how to kill him, not where he came from or even what he wanted. She regretted not having dug deeper while she could. “The Empire would never let a non-Imperial control the Inquisition.”
“Unless he pledged fealty,” said Lark, handing Fiora her bowl. “I’m sure they could make that magically binding.”
“But if he controlled the Inquisition, it would be easy to get himself unbound,” said Dasira. “Especially since he’s a necromancer—the only necromancer outside of Haaraka, apparently.”
“Haaraka and the White Isle,” said Cob. “The haelhene are necromancers. Maybe he’s the reason they’re allied with the Empire.”
“So Enkhaelen, the Inquisition, the haelhene and the abominations against the Emperor?” said Fiora, balancing her bowl on her knees. “I have to say that sounds pretty overwhelming.”
Dasira half-rose to take the bowl Lark offered, then sat back down. It looked like beans and long-grain skiliorum with some dried mushroom chunks and crumbled herbs, but as dubious as she felt toward Lark’s cooking, at least it was hot.
“Don’t be fooled,” she said as she stirred the soup with her chipped spoon. “Cob wants to see the Emperor as innocent because he still believes in the Empire. You shouldn’t be helping him, you should be pointing out the holes in the theory.”
“Like what?” said Cob tightly.
“Like how come Enkhaelen keeps rescuing you.”
They all looked at her in surprise, and she took a moment to blow over the steaming stew and collect her thoughts. She did not want to stand up for her abhorrent maker, but that was what troubled her most about this situation: his persistent assistance. “I know we’ve all been deluged by the recent chaos—running, fighting, hiding, running some more—but I’ve been noticing things. Hearing things. Someone sabotaged the Gold assault at the edge of the Mist Forest, back when Cob was nabbed by the haelhene. The same someone intervened in the fight by Akarridi—that place on the lake. If Ilshenrir was here, I bet he’d say he felt the same arcane signature. So—“
“He came to us in Haaraka too,” Cob interrupted thoughtfully. “And…I think while I was bein’ flown to the crystal spire. Dead birds everywhere.”
“So the question is, what does he want from you?”
Cob shook his head. “The question is what are we gonna find in the east.”
Lark set down a bowl for Arik, who heaved himself up to lap at the stew then recoil, panting. She gave him a look and said, “Do you need to go chill your tongue?”
The wolf whined but laid back down, staring at the bowl intently.
Conversation lapsed again, everyone either pondering the question or intent on their food. After a few spoonfuls Dasira decided she’d had worse, even though it could use salt and probably a handful fewer herbs. She had to wonder if Lark had just dumped their whole packet into the pot. Ilshenrir returned when she was about halfway through, and after Cob’s quick question and Ilshenrir’s confirmation that he had felt the same arcane signature on both battlefields, they all subsided into thought.
Dasira watched Fiora move progressively closer to Cob. He had pulled his patched tunic on, and she saw when Fiora’s fingers slid under it by the shiver that ran through the young man’s frame. He glanced to her as if startled, and Dasira saw her sidelong look and slight smile, saw the red crawl across Cob’s tanned face. In that moment, she could have leapt across the fire at the Trifolder girl, so sure was she that Fiora was toying with him.
But she held her temper, though it meant biting down on her spoon hard enough to leave marks in the old metal. Cob had his own life to live, his own mistakes to make, and when he hooked his arm around the girl’s shoulders it was obvious that he intended to make them.
Once the bowls were washed and the fire was banked, Dasira watched the two of them move off into the stables area to ‘talk’, and had to convince herself that it was not worth it to punch the knowing expression off Lark’s face or follow them and break up their fun.
In all her time trailing Cob, angsting about how to protect him from himself, she had not imagined that the hardest part would be just watching.
*****
Two hundred miles to the northwest, Rian hung shivering from the eaves of a tavern half-set within the base of the Citadel wall. He had tracked Geraad’s captors here three days ago, following their roundabout routes with the aid of the dead trellingil, but since then he had not seen the bird and had found little opportunity to get closer. He knew the room that the kidnappers used—one of the few that had been carved into the black basalt, windowless and practically soundproof—but had no way to get in. No way to reach his friend without being captured by the nasty mages who came and went at all marks.
Below him, the city of Valent sprawled in the shadow of the Citadel, its populace still active despite the time and season. Mage-lights glimmered in shop-fronts, late diners sat outside beneath protective wards, and palanquins were hoisted to and fro by their obsidian bearers as the normal citizens took advantage of their proximity to the mages’ perks. Constructs swept the streets free of snow, the glyphs on their shoulders gleaming as they lumbered through darkened areas.
Rian did not know why his friend’s kidnappers remained here. Certainly he wanted to flee, far away from this frightening place, back to the tunnels and caverns of his home. But he could not, and it was not simply because he did not know the way.
He could not leave Geraad. He had to find a way in.
Sneaking had not worked. Though he had managed to filch plenty of food from the tavern and even make his way to the proper door, he could not open it; like the constructs, it was covered in glyphs. There was no lock to pick, not even a latch—just the warding magic and the constant threat of a mage showing up.
He dared not get anyone’s attention. Even if he could speak well, he knew non-Shadow Folk would just shriek and throw things at him, and he had looked all around this part of town for some kind of Shadow sign but found nothing.
No allies, not even that cursed dead bird—
As if his thought had summoned it, he glimpsed something moving against the blackness above, and flinched when he heard talons impact the edge of the roof. Then a raptor’s head peered at him upside down—not a trellingil this time but a songkiller, larger and significantly more dangerous. Rian recoiled from it, then realized from its glassy gaze that it too was dead.
It opened its beak, and the necromancer’s voice said, “Aha. Still here, are they?”
Rian nodded cautiously.
“Magic room,” said Rian. “Top floor back wall middle.”
“Probably relying on the Citadel’s emanations to mask them,” said the songkiller. “They’ll regret that.”
“Save Geraad now?”
“Yes, I seem to have a quiet moment. Just need to pick out a body. Very important, you know. First impressions.”
Rian stared at the songkiller as it hung there upside down. He wanted to pry its talons away or bite its stupid head off, but knew that would only irritate the necromancer, his only ally. Knowing that he had to rely on the monster that had hurt Cob and put magical controls in his head made him want to curl into a ball and cry.
When the necromancer’s voice came again, it was somehow distant. “There, all ready. You’re certain it was the middle room?”
“Ys.”
“Then I’ll be there shortly. You might want to make yourself scarce.”
With that, the songkiller’s beak sagged and its wings went loose, drooping downward before the whole bird detached from the eaves to fall to the snow below. Rian stared down at it, a dark splotch against the white, then eyed the nearest window.
Necromancer or not, he refused to be warned away from the rescue of his friend.
*****
They were in his mind again, poking, prying, their thoughts like precision tools chipping at the mortar of his psychic walls. He could only raise so many in his exhausted state, and the newest were shabby, brittle things when compared to those he had raised upon awakening. It would not be much longer before they eroded to nothing.
He thought he could make his heart stop before that. Use of mentalism strained the body as well as the mind, drawing on the flesh’s own reserves of energy to power it. He was sure that even if he could not tell his heart to stop, he could drain himself enough to simply die of exhaustion. A wretched waste of life, but there seemed no other option.
He no longer heard his tormentors’ questions, no longer saw their faces. Vaguely he knew he was bound but not blindfolded, yet no light reached him. The only sound was a low rush like wind through a tunnel. He could not feel his body either, but sometimes there were phantom sensations around him, a caress of water or silk or rough grass—a thin, transitory memory.
At those moments he knew they were starting to breach the palisades he had built around his mind, but so far the touches had been fleeting. To get what they wanted, they would have to excavate; they needed him alive, conscious, sane, because otherwise all they would find would be blasted fragments, impossible to reassemble into a cogent whole. For him, to win was to wait, to deteriorate. For them, it was to break through and pull him out the other side, convince him that he wanted to live.
Shouldn’t have broken my hands then, he thought dimly. Should have left me something to gain.
And then, suddenly, the prying stopped.
He quivered in darkness for what felt like an eternity, waiting for the torment to resume. Yet nothing came, and as his mind slowly regrouped from the myriad barriers it had been defending, he heard words. Faint, distant at first—sounds of surprise and alarm—and beneath them the low visceral rumble of something large grating against something hard.
Then a voice behind him, clear as a bell despite the haze that muffled all else.
“You should have run further.”
Shouts in front of him, confused and angry. The sudden static sensation of energy being gathered, the sizzle as it passed him, then the wave of enervating cold that rolled out from the man behind him.
He felt himself shudder in his bonds, felt his injuries for the first time—cuts, burns, bruises, the endless throb of his broken hands—but though the ghastly aura chilled his skin, it did not embrace him. It moved past him like a fog, swallowing up the sound and frenzy of his tormentors. One by one he heard them fall, limp and heavy, to the stone floor.
Metallic footsteps clicked on the stone, perfectly clear. They moved in front of him, and he felt more than saw his rescuer: an essence like a void in the room, a gash in reality from which gleamed two blue stars.
Then he heard the hiss of unsealing wards, and his rescuer said, “I know you’re out there. You might as well come in.”
A familiar skittering sound made his heart clench. He felt the goblin’s hands on his knees, heard a whimper, then winced as long fingers plucked at his mage-wrought bonds. No thief-tool would unlock them, and with them clamped around his wrists and the arms of the chair, the chair itself had been rendered unbreakable.
The door hissed shut again, and the footsteps clicked toward him. From behind the chair, Rian snarled.
All Geraad could see was the blue stars piercing down from some impossible height, but he felt the touch on his cheek—cold fingers tracing the line of his jaw, making all the bruises go numb. Nothing touched his mind-shields, not even a whisper of thought.
“Well now, what shall I do with you, Geraad Iskaen?” said the voice. “You’ve already seen too much.”
He wanted to protest, wanted to say he’d seen nothing, but those blue stars burned into him with manic intensity and he realized he knew them.
The eyes of the necromancer in Rian’s mind.
Can’t be, he thought. Those eyes had been Corvish-dark, cunning but certainly not mad. Whoever—whatever this was, it was something beyond human, beyond even necromancy.
The burning wings, the bright laughter…
“I don’t like leaving loose ends, Iskaen. I certainly can’t let them take you for the Psycher Weave. So that gives me two options. I’m sure you can guess what they are.”
Death, he thought. Or…
He tried to move his lips, felt them respond. Cleared his throat hoarsely, all too aware of the necromancer’s gaze. “I will not serve you,” he whispered.
“But you already have. Digging up the facts, exposing my past connections, the evidence I have overlooked—I appreciate that kind of drive in an opponent, but you are far too weak to threaten me. Alone, vulnerable, hunted by your own fellows. Thanks to you, I see a few more details to cover up, some obstacles to remove, but you have a painful death breathing down your neck.
“It would be a shame to waste such a resilient mentalist talent. I’ve observed many in my time, but few have been capable of withstanding the kind of onslaught you’ve taken, and even fewer have shown the will to draw themselves down to the brink of death. Are you so eager to die?”
The casual nature of the necromancer’s inquiry chilled Geraad. His mind raced for a rebuttal, a vehement refusal of his captor’s insinuation, but his thoughts always returned to the ache in his hands.
He was adrift, a man without family because of his ostracizing talent, without master or purpose because of his crippling injury. Jailed by his fear of his enemies but also by the politics of his allies. No reason to live. From the moment he had been picked out as a nascent mentalist, he had belonged not to himself but to his lord, to the Silent Circle, to the Empire. In the twenty-eight years since that moment, he had only once made his own decision.
To resist.
“You’re not even a friend of his,” said the necromancer as if it could read his thoughts. “Cob, that stubborn little thorn in my side. You met him once—twice, if you would count the accident on the road. And yet you persist in hiding his secrets from the Golden Wing, from the Valent Council. It can’t be from loyalty.”
But it is, Geraad thought vaguely. Since attaining his Warder title, every interaction he had experienced, every conversation, every introduction or event or lavish party had been business. As Count Varen’s personal Warder he had attended feasts and royal pageants, clandestine meetings, private assignations—all as an outsider dedicated to keeping the Count’s mind free of influence, his thoughts shielded, his body defended from strikes both magical and mundane. He was just so much moving, s
pellcasting furniture, alienated from the non-mages by his magic and shielded from their thoughts for his own peace of mind. Respected but unloved, a necessity, a sentinel.
And then had come Cob. A lunatic who had looked at him like a real person, who had helped him for no reason, who had left Rian in his care.
For what semblance of a life he had discovered after his destruction, he had the two of them to thank.
Even now he felt Rian’s fingers through the slats of the chair, digging into the back of his robe as if the goblin could somehow pull him through to freedom. To think that they could escape this was ridiculous, but for the sake of the childlike creature who had come to rely on him, he knew he should swallow his revulsion, his fear. This, too, was only business.
“What do you want from me?” he whispered.
“From you?” The necromancer laughed, a strange raspy sound. “I’m making you an offer, Iskaen, not requesting a service. Certainly you’re no use to me in this state.”
No use to myself either. For a moment the black sea of despair he had suppressed for so long surged beneath him, and he tasted the bile at the back of his throat—the fear that he had never been a man, merely an automaton, a construct performing its duties in accordance with the glyphs scribed on its back.
“No, I don’t want anything from you,” the necromancer continued. “Not yet. But trust me, you could use my help.”
Geraad managed a short, coughing laugh and wondered if he was delirious. “You, help me?”
“You’d be surprised. For example...”
The cold moved down over Geraad's crippled hands, and he hissed in a fearful breath as icy fingertips touched his skin. But the aches that riddled his splintered fingers suddenly abated—not to numbness but just not pained. For the first time since they had been broken, they felt tolerable.
His eyes watered. He had forgotten what it was like to not hurt, and if the necromancer was offering freedom from pain...
But he could not ignore the wealth of suspicions against the man, the undeniable body-count. Anything that would aid this enemy—