The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) (67 page)

Ilshenrir came around a tree suddenly to drive a spike of green crystal into the back of one retreating mage, through ward and robe.  He disappeared like a ripple in water as the man fell.

As another black sphere flew in from the first direction, Cob had the presence of mind to think,
Allies?
  But it impacted among the hounds, sending two to the snow in hideous death-throes, and a wave of crushing sickness washed over Cob—not just revulsion for how the black stuff clung and devoured flesh, but a soul-deep, bowel-twisting aversion.  It was like sensing the abominations a hundred-fold, their corrupted essence distilled down to pure malevolence, pure hunger.  He took another step away, and another, empty stomach roiling.

The two monstrous men looked at each other, then at their mage allies.  The hounds shrank away from their dying comrades to clump toward their masters, horrible features further contorted by fear.  As the Gold mages retaliated against the black-robed figures among the trees, Cob managed to pull himself together enough to check his friends—Fiora white-faced and trembling behind her shield, Arik with all his teeth bared, Lark already a good yard back with an expression that clearly voted for fleeing.

Cob opened his mouth to command just that, the ice mask parting over his lips.  Then he saw the white specks moving above the trees.  “Haelhene,” he cried instead, and heard the Gold abominations curse.

Lances of white light cut through the trees, targeting indiscriminately among the fighting clumps.  Cob managed to lift a thick sheet of ice to intercept a strike, but it burned through the whole thing to carve a line across his shoulder, its energy barely dissipated.  He choked on a scream, then saw Lark’s arrow speed the way the blast had come, only to spatter into shards on a pale ward.

A moment later, a ball of black goop struck that ward, crawling up it like a living thing.  Black threads spun out from the tainted surface, and with a snapped gesture the haelhene flew up and backward, leaving the ward to dissipate into a smoky smear.

More white energy cut through the trees, then gold, then black.  Somewhere to the west Cob heard someone shout, “Retreat!” and the two Gold monsters clicked and hissed at their hounds, each grabbing one and mounting up as they swarmed.

“Pike this,” Cob said, and turned to urge the same.

Then he saw the man coming up from the lake-shore, and froze.

Dimly he recognized that there were others, all dressed in civilian clothes or unmarked armor, all bearing a single black-bladed weapon, but the one coming toward him was so familiar that all other thoughts were washed away.  Though still at a distance, he saw the pockmarked face, the fine pale hair, the lean build and seething eyes, and knew without a doubt that this was the hand of vengeance reaching out for him.

Erevard.

In a flash, he was back at the Crimson camp, outside the River Gate, Darilan facing him half-lit by moonlight and a sword quivering between them.  A sword embedded in the palisade wall through the throat of Jas Fendil.

Atop the wall had been Erevard, unknowing, unseeing.  Easily the most dangerous man in Cob’s old group, his callous nature had been mollified only by his lover’s indomitable cheer.  Cob could not even imagine his reaction to Fendil’s murder.

With a jolt, he remembered that the Army had blamed him.

Their eyes locked, and recognition filled Erevard’s face.  His scarred lips peeled back from newly serrated teeth, and he charged.

Someone shouted something, but Cob did not listen.  All he saw were the changes as the scarred man closed the distance—not just the teeth but the thick scales on his neck and jaw, the black veins stitching his temples, the poisonous yellow of his once-colorless eyes.  He radiated the same sickness as the monstrous Gold soldiers that had just fled, but sensing that from such a familiar person gave Cob a gut-deep shock.

He was so transfixed that he almost missed Erevard’s blade coming down at him, black-on-black.  He raised his arm to deflect it.

The black blade cut through the ice armor as if through air, then into Cob’s forearm, sending agony howling through his bones as it creased them.

It would have cut through entirely, but suddenly Fiora was there, knocking the nasty blade aside with the edge of her shield.  “
Breana!
” she shrieked, and a wash of blistering heat evaporated the armor on that side of his body but also sent Erevard reeling backward, eyes wild with hate.

Cob bent double, pain radiating up and down his arm from the inch-deep gash.  It felt like something was crawling inside his bones, and for a moment his vision swam and he thought he would retch.  Then a shaggy arm grabbed him around the waist and hoisted him, and another shout and burst of heat annihilated the rest of his armor.  He gasped raggedly, unable to focus, seeing only smears of color and light as the fight turned to chaos around him.

Then he was being moved rapidly, cold air raking his skin, Arik’s shoulder in his gut as the skinchanger carried him onward.  Two others fell into step behind them—and then a third, after a brief radiant blast at a fourth figure that tried to pursue.  A hair-raising scream of rage rose behind them, then everything turned watery.  Dreamlike.

He closed his eyes and wished it were so.

*****

Dasira treaded water beneath the first hole, left arm uplifted, bracer just touching the surface.  She kept her other hand over her nose and mouth to prevent involuntary reflex from opening either, but her lungs no longer strained; holes had opened on the bracer’s surface to draw air and oxygenate her blood, and though it was uncomfortable, it kept her conscious.  She knew she would have to transition to ichor soon, because no matter her modifications, the cold still ate at her.  But the flashes of magic from above were moving away.

Finally, as she started to lose feeling in her legs, she decided she could wait no longer.  Grabbing the ragged edges of the hole, she lifted herself up into the cold air and blinked a film of ice from her eyes.

Sparks of combat-magic still flared from beyond the treeline, and smoke rose from gaps in the canopy.  Two haelhene moved in and out of the treetops like winged needles, leaving dark smears in the air as they shook off their foes’ assaults.  She saw men running, and hounds, but no one on the ice.  No one looking for her.

Safe for now.

In the middle of pushing herself up from the hole, she felt something clamp around her leg.  Instantly, unbidden, she saw the lake as it had been those thirty-seven years ago: the burning shore, the villagers driven down to the water with their children and their beasts, the crying and pleading as she and her fellow agents drove them deeper with long iron pikes.  Behind and above them, the hovering haelhene, overseeing the sacrifice they claimed necessary to the creation of this place.

Beneath her, she knew that the lake was carpeted in bones.  If ever a place was haunted, it was this one.

But her leg unkinked, and she realized it was just a muscle spasm.  She scrabbled from the hole awkwardly and raked her freezing hair from her face, and told herself that if the dead had wanted her, they would have gotten her back then, when they had still been fresh.

Regrets were not in her nature.

Limping a bit, she moved toward the shore, trying to guess where Cob and the others might be.  With luck, they had already fled, but that meant a long, chilly road toward finding them again.  She did not relish that.

A groan caught her ear, and she glanced over to see the hand-like paws of Calett’s fallen hound twitching.

Her brows rose.  She moved that way and saw that though it had taken an arcane blast to the flank and nearly lost its left foreleg to her earlier cut, the cold had kept it from bleeding out, and it seemed to be regaining consciousness.

A dying mount is better than none
, she thought, and forced the bracer’s tendrils out through her cold-stiffened fingers. 
At the least, I can let Serindas drink from it when it’s gotten me as far as I can go.

She clamped her hand on the back of the hound’s neck.  She would not be left behind.

It was some time before they left the numbing influence of the lake.  Cob floated in and out of consciousness, jounced by the skinchanger’s awkward gait, and every time he approached the surface his attention was consumed by the crawling itch in his arm.  He opened his eyes to slits occasionally, trying to see if he was bleeding out, but though his forearm was streaked with red, there was not much of it.  The gash had frozen in the icy air.

Eventually the itch subsided, as did the nausea, and his awareness of his surroundings returned.  He patted Arik’s quill-coated back a few times, still too woozy for a proper hit, but the muscular skinchanger seemed to feel it and slowed, then bent forward to set him on his feet.

His bare soles sunk through the crust of snow to touch the earth and energy surged into him, driving away the weakness.  Blinking, he straightened.  It was full dark now, moonless, the Eye of Night staring down emptily.  Around them, the forest stood in stripe-like patches between frozen runnels of streams.  They were headed uphill, away from the lake-valley and into the first rugged fingers of the tablelands, but the screen of trees was too thick to see far.

“
Is everyone all right?” he rasped, looking around.  It surprised him to find that despite the dimness, he saw his companions almost as clear as day.

Beside him, Arik nodded his shaggy head.  The gashes on his thigh had sealed, and Cob glanced down to see that the same had happened to his forearm—the Guardian’s doing.  It still itched, but faintly.  His shoulder seemed mended, though the sleeve was a loss.

“We’re fine, just tired,” said Fiora, and stepped forward to touch his arm.  He smiled wanly down at her, glad to see no blood on her gear.  The shield slung across her back had a chunk taken from one corner, but the assault did not seem to have reached her.  “How do you feel?” she said.  “You had a…moment back there.”

Cob grimaced and glanced the way they had come, past Lark and Ilshenrir, who both looked harried but well.  “Saw someone I recognized.  Not in a good way.”

“The one with the black sword?”

“
Yeah.  He was a…comrade.”

Fiora frowned and tugged at his arm until he looked at her.  “But he was a monster.  I know they have monsters in the Armies, but…”

He looked away, not knowing what to say.  He did not think that Erevard had been that nasty thing back when they were camp-mates, but he wasn't sure.  The golden pendants that some of them wore seemed to keep them looking human, but having something like that would have made a slave a target.  Still, Darilan had always been a monster, and Cob had no idea how someone could go from human to abomination.

When she tugged at his arm again, expression questioning, he just shook his head.  She frowned but let it drop.

“Look, we need to find shelter,” said Lark, “or as much as I hate to say it, we need to keep running.  Stand here and we’ll freeze solid.”

“
I can not shield us from the wind much longer,” said Ilshenrir.  “It has been a tiring day.”

Cob blinked, only now realizing that despite the rattle of tree-branches in the breeze, the air was still around them.  “Thanks for watchin’ our backs,” he said, and the wraith inclined his hooded head.

Arik made a gargling sound, then grunted and stretched his jaw so wide that it popped.  Wincing, Cob watched his visage shift from muzzle to face, teeth reordering themselves in his wide maw.  “We can dig a den,” the skinchanger said once it was done, peering around in the dim light.  “Ground is hard but what other options?”

“
An ice house?” said Fiora.  “They make those in the north, right?  Cob can move the snow…”

They all looked at him, and he nodded slowly but privately did not know if he had the strength.  He could stand straight, talk, think, but the events of the day had sapped the fire from him, and he wanted to curl up and sleep.  “I’ll see if I can find a good spot,” he mumbled, and closed his eyes to feel through his feet.

At least the landscape here was alive.  Just touching it fed him a continual slow drip of support, though its winter somnolence made him weary by proxy.  Thin rivulets of water flowed beneath the thick stream ice, tree roots clung tight to the soil, and beneath them was good solid rock—a steady place, a comfortable place if not for the cold blanket over everything.  Hard to excavate for Arik’s den, though, and learning how to form an ice shelter for the lot of them felt beyond him.

Then his senses hit a straight line.  A foundation.

He squinted that way and glimpsed a peak among the snow-cover beyond the next ridge of trees: the unbroken line of a roof.  At his gesture, the others looked as well.

“
Huh,” said Fiora.  “That’s convenient.”

A nervous tingle ran up Cob’s spine.  Lark glanced to him, brows raised doubtfully; she was hugging herself and shivering despite her layers, but obviously not keen to walk into a trap.  Closing his eyes again, he felt further around the structure, but found no magic or any sense of occupancy.

“It’s…fine, I think,” he said.

Lark shook her head.  “I’d swear it wasn’t there a moment ago…”

“There has been no alteration in our environment,” said Ilshenrir.  “We should accept what serendipity comes our way.”

“
Serendipity, my ass,” muttered Lark, but gestured for the wraith to accompany her as she started toward it.

Cob and the others fell in behind them as they trekked up the ridge and through the trees.  At the top, they found themselves looking down into a cleft in the woods nearly filled by a low stone structure, half-built into the flank of the ridge and drifted heavily with snow.  Tall stable doors stood in its side, next to a smaller entry.

“It looks like a caravan-shelter,” said Lark, bemused.  “I thought this land was abandoned.”

“
Years and years ago,” said Fiora.

“
Well then who’s been keeping it up?”

Cob frowned but had no answer, and neither did the girls, for after a long moment of staring at the doors, Lark finally shrugged and picked her way down the incline.  Fiora followed, then Ilshenrir, then Arik, who paused halfway down to give Cob a quizzical look.  Sighing through his teeth, Cob bent to the needs of the group and started after.

At the structure, Lark and Fiora broke snow away from the smaller door and wedged it open, then peered in together.  “We need a light in here,” he heard her say as he approached.  A moment later, a small spark lifted from Ilshenrir’s hand to dart through the opening.

“
See?  Definitely a caravan-shelter.”  Lark pointed at something as light flared within.  “That’s Iroliyale’s sign—the god of travelers.”

“
Well, maybe that’s why it’s still standing,” said Fiora.  “He’s your ally, right?  So it’s safe.”

“
I guess.  It’s still weird.”

“
Look, I’m a Trifolder, you’re Shadow Folk, he’s the Guardian.  It would be weirder if the gods weren’t watching.”

Lark made a noncommittal sound, then said, “Oh my god, a kettle!” and slipped in.

The others followed until only Cob lingered at the threshold, peering in.  The area they had opened was a single large room with an empty fire-pit in the center and bins and boxes lining the walls.  The ceiling peaked sharply, the space up there full of rafters and cobwebs, and along the left wall was another small door that seemed to lead into the stables-area.  It was cold inside, and smelled musty, but it was nowhere near the bitter chill of the hills.  On the wall across from the door was a huge symbol drawn in charcoal, something like a sword-dancer surrounded by swirling ribbons.

Already the girls were busy pulling boxes over to the fire-pit or fishing through the bins for firewood and kitchen tools.  Ilshenrir had drifted over to the god-symbol, one hand raised but not quite touching it.  Only Arik looked back as Cob withdrew from the doorway.  His furry ears cocked in question.

Cob glanced westward, to where they had left that faint sense of Dasira behind.  He knew he should not stay outside, should not wait for her; no doubt she would be in the company of an Imperial host if she came, and there were probably dozens of mages and monsters trying to track him right now.  But going inside and closing the door felt wrong.

No matter what she had done, she was still—

What, Cob?  Why are you deluding yourself?

He grimaced but shook his head.  She had come for him in the haelhene spire, come for him at the battle by the river, come to save him from his imprisonment in Thynbell.  Whatever she was playing at right now, he wanted to believe it was to help him.

You’re such a pushover.

“
I know, I know,” he mumbled.  “But—“

Fendil.  Erevard.  And who knows what’s happened to the others, all because Darilan forced you out.

“Yeah, but—“

But what?

“I—“  He blinked, suddenly unsure he was talking to himself.  It felt like himself, and he had to admit that he was constantly wrestling with doubts, but he did not usually do so out loud.  “Um…hoi?” he murmured.

But nothing answered.  He exhaled and rubbed the bridge of his nose, wondering if he would notice if he went insane.

Arik still watched him from the doorway.  He tried to muster a smile for the skinchanger but his face felt frozen in its grimace, not by the cold but by the oppression of his mood.  The skinchanger’s wolfish ears flicked again, weird on his otherwise-human head, then he gave Cob the close-mouthed smile that Cob could not manage.

“
You should take what time you need,” said Arik.  “We will be waiting.”

Cob nodded numbly and looked down their backtrail again.  Nothing moved within his sight-line, the forest thick on the ragged ridges behind them, yet even without the Guardian’s senses he felt Dasira’s approach.  Like inevitability, like the march of time—something they had both avoided for too long.

Unspeaking, he turned away from the door and heard it creak shut behind him, the chatter of his companions muffling into snowbound silence.

He took a deep breath, feeling the cold air invade him before warming in his lungs.  The temperature no longer bothered him—not the snow under his bare feet, not the wind against his face—and as if he had become one with the darkening of the year, the dim cluster of trees proved no barrier to his eyes.  Every skeletal branch stood out clearly against its fellows, every blue shadow carved into the snow as if by a painter’s knife, every glitter of icicle and glint of starlight as finely delineated as ink on parchment.  As he climbed through the broken snow to the top of the ridge they had just descended, he saw, far out through the wilderness, a slight, slow movement.

One shape, small among the trees.  Tired.

Reaching up, he took hold of a frozen branch and snapped it from its tree, a cascade of snow and ice falling over his shoulders without effect.  The branch crackled to life in his grip, growing long and straight and green until he relaxed his concentration.  New staff in hand, he watched the small figure, picking out details as it approached: the stiffness, the hitching steps, yet the relentless drive.

His stomach turned over.  Whatever his newfound power, he was not the Guardian in heart.  It had cloaked him in strength and taught him its secrets but he could not bring himself to feel outward with its senses now—to see Dasira again as what she was, instead of what he wanted her to be.  Consciously, he pushed the Guardian’s presence down and felt the chill bite into his cheeks again, into his toes.  He would not stand unarmed, but this was his business alone.

At last she broke through the screen of trees and stood for a moment, staring up at him from the base of the ridge.  Starlight silvered her in strange scaly lines, and for a moment he thought he was seeing another Guardian vision before he realized it was ice.  Ice glazing her skin and clothes and hair, not like his armor but weighing her down, cracked by her movements but clinging tenaciously.  Her breath made no mist in the air, as if she was no warmer than the night.

He had seen people freeze to death in the mountains and at the quarry where he had worked, succumbing to sleep or to delirium and tearing off their garments as if they thought it was the desert, yet never had he seen someone so frozen still walking.  Her clothes were shredded beneath the scales of ice, and as she started up the spine of the ridge she reached to break something off of her left arm.  He only realized it was that monstrous dagger when she cast it aside to fall lifeless black against the snow, the burning runes that should have decorated it thoroughly extinguished.

As she closed in, he saw the stark whiteness of her face, the blue tinge of her lips.  Her eyelids were nearly sealed with rime, but in the last few steps he saw her jaw tighten, saw subtle motions beneath her skin that returned the life to her features.  She blinked, ridding her eyes of a thin film of frost, then fell to one knee barely two yards away.

He looked down at her—at the black bracer on her bared left arm, at her bent head and the slow heave of her chest, at the grey flesh under her torn shirt that was not frostbite but something so much worse.  The black blade lay far behind her.  Every aspect screamed of surrender.