The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) (89 page)

He stepped in cautiously, and his breath caught in his throat.

That single shaft of light had struck a corner of the glimmering object and refracted through it, making it fairly glow in the confines of the narrow room: a coffin of faceted glass, nearly transparent and raised on a silver bier.  Motes of light danced on the walls like stars as he moved around it.

The lid was askew and partially shattered.  Shards glistened like tears on the cheeks of the woman inside: the Muriae Jessamyn, Enkhaelen's wife, her long silver hair loose about her shoulders and her eyes closed as if in sleep.  A thin ice-blue band glinted on her left ring-finger.  No mark of time had touched her though she must have died long ago; her face still held a suggestion of stern will, as if she might sit up at any moment and lecture the one who had been so unmilitant as to unweave her war-braid.

She might have worn a funeral dress once, but the fabric had rotted away with the shattering of the lid, leaving her bare but for a corselet and girdle of silver-edged steel.  Above the corselet, cracks ran through her dusky skin to expose silver veins.

Cob knew the story of the Muriae—that they were pure living silver masked in human façades, that they emerged full-grown from the earth and never died.  He did not know if it was true, but this woman was gone.  What remained on the bier was a husk.

Her lifeless hands clasped the hilt of a silver sword.

His shoulders tensed, and he squinted out of the room as if he might see the Guardians there, or the Ravager.  Or Enkhaelen.  In his heart, he knew that the blur around these silver swords had been the necromancer's doing—that there was something about them that Enkhaelen needed to smudge out.  And now he knew.

He did not want to do this.  Not after the nightmare.  And stealing from a revered Silver One left a foul taste in his mouth.

But he had been drawn here for a reason.

"I'll bring this back when I'm done," Cob whispered to the cold, stern face.  "I promise."

He reached down to part the hands from the hilt, hating himself, expecting that at any moment those closed eyes would snap open and those hands would grip him by the throat and crush it.  But that did not happen.  A skin of ice crackled off the metal as he pulled the blade free, and with great care he drew it through the shattered lid.  The woman never stirred.

It was a long weapon, longer than the one his father had wielded: over four feet from pommel to point, with a hand-and-a-half hilt wrapped in braided wire.  The crossguard was short, the whole blade straight as an arrow, almost no taper to it and only a stub of pommel at the end of the grip.  Almost aggressively plain, it bore no etchings or decorations, only the sheen of its high polish.  The upper quarter of the blade was unsharpened, ricasso, but the edge on the rest looked as keen as if whetted yesterday.

He lifted it reverently, hardly able to believe that he was touching a Muriae blade.  It was a comfortable weight in his hands.  He had never much liked swords, but this one...

"I will return it," he said again.  "If not to here, then to Muria where it belongs.  I will show my respect."

All was silent in the sepulcher, no answer returning.  Resting the flat of the blade on his shoulder, he bowed to the bier, then moved out of the chamber, past the slabs, to the fallen ceiling.

Through the crumbling walls he felt the roots he had made already digging in at ground level.  They responded to his touch, weaving into steps that led into open air at a point where the manor wall had been breached.  He stepped through into the yard and surveyed the broken masonry, the exposed foundation-stones, the corners full of windblown snow and the beds of winter-dead weeds.  Everything before had been illusion.

Questions lingered, but he was tired of thinking.

A flash of light came from beyond the hedges, cobalt blue stitched with white, like sudden lightning.  Then another.

He grimaced.  That would be Enkhaelen.

Bolting down the steps into the maze, he let the hedges direct him to the wrought black gate.  Through its bars he saw his friends at bay and the unmistakable form of the necromancer.

As much as he wanted to rush out there, he dared not.  He saw Dasira on the ground unmoving, Ilshenrir not far from her, the other three cowering.  If he attacked while they were near, Enkhaelen would kill them as surely as he had obliterated everyone at Riftwatch.

Then he thought of the nightmare, and of the Enkhaelen-echo’s panic and confusion, and smiled grimly as the Guardian’s black armor surged up to protect him.

He had a plan.

Lark hid behind Arik as the necromancer passed, though the skinchanger was no less cringing than her.  Enkhaelen rushed by without a glance, and as he disappeared through the gate, Lark looked mournfully to the fallen.

And saw both stir.

Her heart leapt into her throat.  Indecision held her for a moment, then she rushed to Dasira’s side, wincing at the mangled state of the assassin’s face.  The bone that showed through the place where her ear had been was deeply scorched and cracked, her jaw dislocated, her right eye twitching in its damaged socket.  Yet both eyes turned toward Lark as she crouched nearby, and despite being unfocused, they showed sentience; her lips shifted slightly as if she meant to speak, but her damaged jaw would not allow it.

“
Just…just stay still.  You’ll be fine,” Lark told her, eyes watering in visceral discomfort.  Thin white threads peeked slightly from the borders of the damaged flesh but had yet to begin restitching her.  It seemed she nodded marginally and let her gaze slide away, so Lark rose again, weak in the knees.

She saw Arik and Fiora pull Ilshenrir to his feet.  The wraith looked less human than ever, his eyes just crystal circles in a mask of a face, but that alien mien did not negate the horror of the ragged gashes that scored his cheeks.  The teeth-marks.  His fine hair looked like spun glass, two hanks of it sheared away to show ichor-welling furrows along his scalp. A faint yellow light pulsed at the base of his throat like a candle-flame seen through milky glass, not strong enough to return any color or detail to his frame.

“He didn’t finish?” Lark said.  “I thought he was—  He tried to eat you.  Your face—”

“
Drained me,” said Ilshenrir, the words coming hollow and stilted through a mouth that did not move.  “Could have bitten through my shell and devoured me, but…no.”

“
Probably just lack of time,” said Fiora, looking toward the hedge-maze gate.  “We need to follow them.  We can still—“

“
Die?” said Lark sharply.  “Arik can’t do anything against him, Ilshenrir looks like he’s about to break, and I have one arrow left.”  She flicked the arrow to make it rattle sadly in its quiver.  “What do you think we’re gonna do?”

“
Well you can skive off, but I’m going,” said Fiora.  “Anything I can do to give the Guardian the upper hand, even if it’s just serving as a distraction—“

“
That’s the problem!  You’ll distract the Guardian, not the necromancer!  Don’t you read stories in the Trifold?  Nasty villain, honorable hero, captured girlfriend—“

“
We tell better stories than that.”

“
It doesn’t mean it won’t happen.  Look, either we stay out here in safety or we make a plan, and I can’t think of anything that could even give him a tickle.  So unless you can—”

“
The arrow,” said Ilshenrir faintly.

“
It’s just one arrow!”

“
It is spirit-marked.  You called upon the crows in Erestoia.”

“
I don’t see what crows are gonna—“

“
You have not seen them kill raptors?”  When she just blinked, Ilshenrir continued slowly, “We have long observed the Crow, and it is no friend to the Ravager.  When its children see birds of prey, they mob them.  Tear them apart.”

At Arik’s solemn nodding, Lark said, “That’s great and all, but I only have one arrow, and he has magic wards.  Can’t put much faith in a single shot.”

“Here,” said Fiora, reaching down the collar of her chainmail tunic to pull out a small sword-emblazoned pouch on a cord.  She tugged it open and removed a familiar arrowhead, then pressed it into Lark's hand.  "Use this."

Lark looked from the unnaturally cold crystalline arrowhead to the girl, brows furrowed.  It was the one Cob had worn, the one she had stolen from Darilan’s body, the one that had gone missing in Erestoia, and when she opened her mouth to voice the question, Fiora turned away and started into the maze.

She traded baffled looks with Arik and Ilshenrir—at least, she guessed the wraith was baffled—then eyed the arrowhead.

Well crap.  Maybe Das isn’t completely paranoid.

“So, I should just replace the old arrowhead with this and poof, it will kill Enkhaelen?” she said.

Ilshenrir reached out to touch it, and citrine energy surged down his arm to pour into the silvery crystal, making it hum in Lark’s hand.  The light at his throat guttered and shrank.

“It will break through,” he whispered, then slumped in Arik’s grip.

The skinchanger tried to haul him to his feet, but he was like an unstrung puppet, so finally Arik just laid him down gently.  When he turned worried eyes to Lark, she grimaced and clutched the humming arrowhead, then drew her last arrow from the quiver.  She only hoped her shaking fingers could do the work quickly enough.

*****

Cob had expected Enkhaelen to fly after him.  After all, he had wings.  So when he sensed the Ravager’s footsteps through the roots and stones of the hedge-maze, he was both relieved and concerned.  Relieved because it meant he could get his plan underway sooner; concerned because it made no sense for Enkhaelen to walk.

That suspicion made him wait several turns of the maze before he acted.  Dimly he sensed the others at the outskirts, and once raised a new hedge just to keep Fiora from getting involved, but the bulk of his attention was on Enkhaelen.  On the controlled, calm way the necromancer strolled the path.

Finally Cob just reached out with a hedge to bind him.

It worked initially, the branches all wrapping around their victim and crushing through several wards.  His second act was to sweep up a mass of stone and ice to further engulf the necromancer, but with that wave on its way, he suddenly lost contact with the plants and earth in the area, as if an Akarridi-esque dead spot had spontaneously formed at that point.  No sound, no lightning, no fire, just death.

Unnerved, he moved deeper into the maze and waited.

Soon he felt Enkhaelen’s footsteps leave the dead spot, still walking calmly.  He let the necromancer pass another bend in the maze then tried again, with the same result.  Worried now, Cob retreated the full distance to the manor courtyard, where the snow and ice lay thicker, thinking that even if Enkhaelen could kill the plants and the soil, he might still have a shot at trapping him in a massive wall of ice.

With that in mind, he planted the silver blade point-down in a weed-strewn flowerbed, then dredged up ice and snow from all corners to coat the sword and the ground around it.

When he looked back, Enkhaelen stood at the courtyard’s entry, staring up at the manor house with an unreadable expression.

Cob did not wait for the necromancer to focus on him.  He reached out to the hedges and snowdrifts that surrounded Enkhaelen and compressed them toward him, watching the branches crackle and grow as the snow surged like seafoam up the necromancer’s legs.

The necromancer did not look away from the manor, and made no gesture, but suddenly the life fled the hedges and they withered to black stubs.  The snow climbed his body, solidifying around legs and torso and limbs, but then his blazing wings cut forward and the snow sizzled into steam.

Cob ground his teeth as the necromancer finally turned to look at him, pale eyes like sparks even from this distance.

“You are trespassing,” he said.

“
I was invited.”

“
By my splinter?  I had wondered what he was planning.  This is certainly…unusual.”  His gaze went past Cob to the sword in the flowerbed and his expression twisted.  “And you’ve added grave-robbing to your crimes.”

“
I saw your wife.”

“
Obviously.”

“
No, I mean I saw her while she was alive.”

A spasm crossed the necromancer’s face, some unidentifiable emotion.  When he spoke again, his voice was rigid and cold.  “Did you now.”

“What happened?”

“
Here?”  He gave a brittle laugh.  “She got between me and her brother.”

“
And you killed her?”

“
I killed everyone.  That should not surprise you.”

“
It doesn’t.  But it bothered your splinter.”  Again Cob recalled those bursts of wild emotion—the love, the hate—and could not reconcile them with the man before him.  “Why doesn’t it bother you?”

The necromancer’s mouth curled into a parody of a smile.  “Why Cob, were you trying to play mind-games with me?  That’s adorable.  You fooled Daenivar by hiding beneath a cloak of my aura, but that does not mean you know me.”

Son of a crap
, Cob thought. 
Maybe that splinter was the only part of him that cared, and I just killed it.  Now what do I do?

Still lingering by the maze entry, Enkhaelen said, “White King, I need to have a chat with you.”  When nothing happened, his eyes narrowed.  “So.  You managed to kill him.”

“Wasn’t hard.”

“
And now you think you can kill me?  In my own home?”

Another echo of the nightmare, incongruously calm.  Cob bit down on the bad feeling and said, "Looked abandoned t' me."

“Like that cave in Kerrindryr?”

The taunt hit him in the gut, and he bared his teeth and swept a mass of ice at Enkhaelen.  The necromancer did not try to avoid it, his wings clasping around him to burn a simple hole through the wave.  Cob thought he saw the wings dim as they did so, but a moment later they were back to full glare.

“Exactly,” Enkhaelen went on, finally taking a step into the courtyard.  Then another.  “You project your pain onto me, Cob.  How much did it hurt to revisit the place where your family died, even in dreams?  How long have you stayed away from Kerrindryr, from your childhood and those memories?”

“
You’re the one who killed them,” Cob snarled.

Enkhaelen spread his hands, still approaching at a casual pace.  “Your parents?  No.  I was trying to speak with your father, but the situation turned combative, and I had nothing to do with your mother’s fate.”

“Combative?  You came there with the Imperials!”

“
I followed the Imperials, yes.”

“
You threw him off the mountain!”

“
Cob, what do you think happens when a Guardian hits the ground?”

Cob stared at him, uncomprehending, and saw him exhale a sigh that left no plume of frost in the icy air.  His stomach sank.  Another corpse-body.

"We don't have to do this, Cob," said Enkhaelen.  "We can still work together.  In essence, we have the same goal.  Vengeance.  You against me, though you should aim yourself against the Empire, and me against..."

"The Trifolders?  The Muriae?" Cob said, but though the nightmare had seemed to support those options, they did not make sense.  The Empire oppressed the Trifold, but it oppressed all the other non-Imperial Light faiths the same, and even allowed enclaves of Trifolders to persist in its territory.  And Kerrindryr had long been an Imperial protectorate, its back turned on the Muriae and its roads open to any Imperial force that wished to traverse them.  If Enkhaelen had wanted either group destroyed...

But Enkhaelen just smiled and kept advancing.  "Give me the sword."

Cob shook his head.  The sword did not belong in the necromancer’s hands.  The fact that he had not simply summoned it to himself like all the metal shrapnel in Haaraka indicated that there was something different about it.

Enkhaelen’s lip curled, then he charged.

Having expected magic, Cob hesitated for a moment.  The necromancer’s black boots struck sparks from thin air as he came on, wings unfurling, feet three inches off the ground, and as Cob shook away the surprise and sent a surge of snow at him, he ran over it on that envelope of air.  Swift as a bird, he closed the distance, blue light radiating from his gloved hands.

Cob threw up an arm in defense as he leapt.  It was all that kept the necromancer’s claw-like fingers from taking out his eyes.

Boots impacted on his armored chest, striking more sparks.  They barely swayed him, but from above came another claw-like hand for his face, and instinctively Cob ducked his head to slam the necromancer’s forearm and shoulder with his antlers, diverting the strike.  A weird heat poured off Enkhaelen from close range, like being slapped with a branding iron, but mere inches away the air was glacial.

He felt the necromancer’s boot turn into a talon, saw through the gap in his arms as whiteness flowed up Enkhaelen’s leg in a pattern of scales and feathers and raw, exposed bone.  Ravager manifestation.

Then Cob shoved outward, hitting the necromancer square in the chest.  Pain streaked him as the talons tore from his stone armor.  He looked up as the Ravager flitted back and saw chunks of black crumbling in its grip, felt ice and soil flowing up his body to repair the damage.

Enkhaelen had changed only halfway, his legs encased in white up to the thigh and his arms to the elbow but his torso, shoulders and face still human.  His ethereal energy-wings had solidified into the three sets Cob had seen in the garret—eagle, owl and unknown skeleton—and they beat slowly as he hovered in midair, mouth set in a sour line.