The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) (40 page)

Still shivering, Rian watched it go, then resumed his creep down the lattice—slowly at first, but soon quicker, then wild, dropping from bar to bar with hardly a pause.  He hit the balcony floor and sprang forward, a chorus of startled voices following him as he bounded down the ribbon-like path after the palanquin.

Bad men were one thing, but he would not let Bad Morshoc get Geraad.

Lark held the lantern up, unnerved by the way its light reflected off the huge wolf’s eyes.  “Arik, it’s me,” she said as she approached cautiously.  “I have your dinner, if you’re hungry…”

The wolf stared at her for a long moment, then lowered his head to Cob’s shoulder.  They lay at the rear of the Mother Matriarch’s basement, on the packed earth among the barrels and kegs; though the Mother Matriarch had offered a pallet, the wolf had growled his disapproval, and by the look of the roots growing up through the floor to touch Cob, Lark supposed he was right.  The Guardian needed a connection with its elements to mend.

Not that Cob looked much better.  A full day had passed since they brought him through the shadows to Turo, and he had not yet woken, his face still pallid beneath its tan.  The smears of blood were gone, but Lark attributed that to the wolf, who had licked Cob’s hair into bizarre stiff shapes and seemed determined to let no one else tend him.  Even as she drew close with the new plate of ham, his fur bristled and a low growl rolled from his throat.

“
It’s fine, it’s fine,” she said, crouching and swiftly exchanging the new plate for the old.  His pale eyes stayed on her as she retreated up the steps, back into the kitchen.

“
How did he look?” said Fiora at the door, holding out a hand for the plate.

Lark passed it over and blew out the lantern.  The kitchen was already warmly lit, the clean white walls and bronzeware reflecting the hearth-glow, and the others watched her expectantly as she set the lantern on the sideboard and eased the door half-shut.  “The same,” she said.  “More roots, but…”

“He has had a terrible injury.  Not even the Guardian can be expected to mend itself so swiftly,” said Vriene Damiel, the Mother Matriarch.  Fiora brought her the plate and she slid it into the washbasin she was tending.

Lark pulled out a chair at the long table and slumped down, glancing to Dasira, but the bodythief’s expression was as flat and distant as it had been since their arrival.  With a sigh, she propped her elbows on the table and sank her chin into her palms.  “So what do we do?”

“We allow him to rest,” said the Mother Matriarch.  She was a slender woman in her late forties, Darronwayn, with long black hair pulled back from her refined face and wide, tea-colored eyes.  In a plain brown house-dress, with sleeves rolled up as she scrubbed the dinner dishes, she could have been any wife or mother.  Only the red braided cord around her neck gave away her affiliation.

At her side as always was her husband Sogan, who had leaned against the whitewashed cabinets to watch her work, his normally dour expression somewhat softened.  He was a broad-cheeked, barrel-chested man with salt-and-pepper hair, dressed as plainly as his wife, and though he seemed stolid and graceless next to her, he gave Lark no uneasy feelings.  His vocabulary ran toward grunts and monosyllables and his folded arms looked as thick as Lark’s thighs, but she got the sense that he would rather cut one off than let harm come to anyone in the house.

Fiora pulled out another chair and plunked down beside Lark, then retrieved her teacup.  The table had chairs enough for six, the house around them fairly roomy—two stories of old whitewashed wood plus a basement, the upper floor dedicated to three cozy bedrooms and the lower to the kitchen, washroom, gathering room and shrine—but Vriene and Sogan were its only occupants.  As guests, Lark and the others had been set up in the spare rooms, and by the abundance of old toys and clothes, shoes, books and papers and souvenirs, Lark knew that the Damiels had sons.  She wondered where they had gone

She had questions about many things, actually, but she had never been certain how to approach Trifolders.  They were valuable allies to the Kheri, but the intense motherliness of Brigyddians had always put her off, and the other two sects were not as common.  Fiora was nice enough but not very informational, and with Cob still sleeping, information-gathering was the only thing they could do.

Having spent most of the day asleep herself, Lark could not blame him.  But now she was up and alert—and washed, and fed, and clad in borrowed clothes—and with Dasira oppressed by the Trifold aura, the onus was on her to get things done.

“
So, is there anything you can tell us about Haaraka, Vriene?” she said, knowing she had to start somewhere.

Vriene glanced up briefly and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear with a soapy finger.  “I hold the medallion you will need to cross the barrier, but I have never visited.  It is rare that we have contact with them—only three times in my tenure as the Mother Matriarch.”

“How long has that been?”

“
Twenty-three years.  Since the murder of the previous Mother Matriarch.”

Sogan made a low sound, almost a growl.

Lark grimaced.  “Murder?  I thought even the Empire respected Brigyddians.  I mean, not that you have a temple here.  Obviously they don’t respect you that much.  But I’d heard that they use your services.”

“
They do now,” said Vriene calmly.  “The Gold Army has a small garrison in town, and when the young men get themselves injured, they come by for tea and sympathy and a bit of off-the-record healing.  They’re local boys mostly, and we don’t mind them saying foolish things as long as they realize how inappropriate it would be to act on them.  The previous Mother Matriarch…  I do not know much about her death, but it was a different time.  My husband and I were sent here to fill the void.”

“
From Darronwy?  That’s a long way.”

Vriene smiled slightly and glanced sidelong to her husband.  “We were considered best suited to the situation.”

Sogan smirked.

Lark tilted her head thoughtfully.  She knew little about the history of the Imperial Heartlands, but figured their arrival must have been after the disastrous fire-season Fiora had mentioned—though how long after, she was not sure.  From what she had seen of the town during their approach, she could tell this place was older than that.  One of the few places that had been spared.

By virtue of the Trifolders’ influence over fire, no doubt.  A good motive for the Empire to kill off a powerful Mother Matriarch.

“
Have you been threatened much?”

“
A time or two.  No trouble has come of it,” said Vriene.  “As you noted, we have no temple; we feel no need to rub our faith in the faces of the Imperials, whether home-grown or visiting.  It staves off conflict.  But let me see, what do I know of Haaraka.”  She extracted a dish from the basin and handed it to her husband, who dried it with a rag as she stared into space.  “It may be called the Accursed Thornland, but it is peaceful and perpetually warm.  The people are human enough, polite, and can not go far from their borders without falling deathly ill.  Many of them have wraith souls, but not all.  They ask nothing of us, but in times of famine they have offered food which, though peculiar, did no harm to anyone.  They are good neighbors no matter what strange things they do behind their barrier.”

“
You don’t mind that they’re necromancers?” said Fiora.  Lark gave her a ‘my turn to talk’ look, but the Trifolder girl did not notice; she was focused on Vriene, expression serious.

Vriene shook her head slightly.  “They have given us no reason to fear.  No bones have gone missing from our graveyards, no lost souls walk the night.  If they follow that dread path, they do so only amongst themselves, and there is nothing that I can say or do to change that.”

“But what about people who go in there?”

“
Those who enter have returned unharmed.  I have been given no reason to consider the Haarakash a danger to us.”

“
But aren’t necromancers—“

“
Um, Fiora, we’re here because we need the necromancers’ help.  Not to fight with them,” said Lark, eyeing the Trifolder girl.  Fiora made a face and sat back in her chair.

“
It is wise to be cautious,” said Vriene, passing another dish to her husband, “but yes, perhaps you should not speculate and instead observe them while you visit.  The townsfolk gossip about them too much; their proximity makes most believe that everything that goes wrong is because of them.  But as I said, they come over rarely.  They are to blame neither for the common strangeness of life nor for the rumors spun around them.”

“
Well, what about the necromancer who tied the spirit into Cob?” said Fiora.  “Maybe he’s some kind of escapee from Haaraka.”

“
He’s not,” said Dasira flatly.

Lark eyed her.  It was the first time she had spoken since they had entered town.

“How do you know?” said Fiora, leaning forward to point with her teacup.  Dasira gave her a bland sidelong look.  “I mean, necromancy was supposed to be exterminated from the North, except for in Haaraka.  Where else could it have come from?”

“
The Ravager.”

“
But the Ravager’s a nature spirit, and necromancy isn’t natural.”

“
No magic is natural,” said Vriene mildly.  “All of the arcane arts were taught to us by wraithkind, in an attempt to distance us from the spirits and diminish their power.  Do you not remember your Trifold history, young Breanan?”

Fiora frowned.  “I don’t remember anything about necromancy.”

With a sigh, Vriene withdrew the last of the flatware, and Sogan hefted the basin and carried it into the washroom.  As she dried the knives and spoons, Vriene said, “Necromancy is an arcane art twisted to a foul purpose, but it springs from the same source.  Brigydde herself was taught the art of prophecy while she was mortal, by a wraith who would eventually be devoured by the Ravager—we think perhaps to absorb its knowledge, for it is said that this is how the Ravager learns magic.”

Lark grimaced.  “By eating people?  That’s horrible.”

“The Ravager is the spirit of predators.  That is how it works.”

“
But it’s not supposed to prey on the Guardian,” said Fiora.  “That’s the problem—they shouldn’t fight like this.  So it’s Morshoc’s fault, whoever he is.”

“
Not our business,” said Lark.  “We’re here to get Cob free of the Guardian.  After that, the Guardian can do whatever it wants.”

“
Do you really think Cob’s gonna let the Guardian go fight the Ravager without him?”

Lark glanced to Dasira, who gave no sign of caring.  “When he came to me, all he wanted was to be free,” she said, turning back to Fiora.  “Maybe things have changed, but I don’t think he wants what the Guardian wants.  Otherwise he wouldn’t be so determined to get rid of it.  We have enough trouble with the Golds; we don’t need to go courting more by plotting how to mess with the Ravager.”

“But it lives in the Imperial City.  With the Emperor.”

“
So what?”

“
So—“  Fiora sighed heavily.  “So it’s a Great Spirit that can do necromancy, and it’s teamed up with the false god who’s had his boot on the necks of both our faiths for decades.  Who knows how long they’ve been working together?  How much they know?  Cob already said that the Ravager has been tinkering with the Seals, so if they’re planning something terrible and we have the Guardian’s strength behind us—a power equal to the Ravager once its chains are broken—“

“
What are you saying?” said Lark.  “You want to start a war?”

“
I’m saying the Guardian could make a difference.  We could make a difference, if Cob just takes the fight to Morshoc.”

Lark opened her mouth to argue, but paused as Vriene pulled out the chair opposite them and settled in, folding her hands on the tabletop.  “There have been many armies led against the Imperial City,” said the Mother Matriarch, “from the Heartlands and from the north, but all have failed—swallowed by the swamps to a man.  It seems to happen every decade or so.  We Trifolders once entertained the idea of marching on the Palace, but our agents who went there never returned, and thus the thought of war has long been shelved.  The Breanans are fiery, bold; naturally they wish for a bold solution to our problem, but fighting the Empire and its minions, or trying to assault the Ravager within the walls of the Imperial City, is the height of foolishness.”

“We didn’t have the Guardian before,” said Fiora.  “It can protect us.  We saw how it tore into the Golds before the haelhene got it—and that’s with it still bound.  If the Haarakash necromancers can break Cob’s bonds, he can protect us from anything the Imperial Light throws at us.  Then we gather our forces and—“

“
Our forces?” Vriene said coolly.  “Our forgers and trainees and laywomen and healers?  Or do you mean our sons and husbands in the Imperial Armies?  Shall we call upon them to desert their posts and gather in secret, march in secret up the long road to the Imperial City?  We have no army, Fiora, and that is how it is meant to be.  We guide the extant armies away from cruelty, away from oppression, slowly turning their boot from our necks, as you put it.  We are not meant to rise up in force.”

“
That’s why we’ll never get out of this mire!”

“
Um,” said Lark, starting to wish she had never sparked this conversation, “we don’t know if Cob will stay with the Guardian or not.  So what say we wait for him to wake up?”