The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (120 page)

“Captain?” prompted the Messenger.

Sarovy blinked, then skimmed the patchy red-and-white crowd.  “I believe so.”

“The doors are sealed?”

“Yes.  I saw the wards activate.”

“Then we shall begin.”

The crowd had already hushed, having learned from the ritual last night, and Messenger Cortine set his hands on the banister and looked down upon the assembled soldiers as if he could actually see them.  He was garbed in the same vestments as always, his bleached hair slicked nearly flat, and Sarovy realized with a weird sense of déjà vu that he was emulating the sleek and simple look of the Emperor.

“Friends,” he began.  “Brethren.  We gather tonight to sing the praises of the fading Light, and to bid it rise again to lead and strengthen us against the depredations of the eternal enemy.  In these days of greatest Darkness, of deprivation and cold, it can be easy to let one's heart sink into despair.  Yet there must be hope, for though the Darkness ever surrounds us, and though the warmth and comfort of the Light may seem far, it is through our reaching—through our faith—that we draw it closer to us.  It is through our praise that it remembers us and turns its glorious face upon us, and through our sacrifice that it gains the strength to drive away the night.  On this festival eve, we call across the Darkness to our lord and liege, to our bright sovereign.

“I know that you, my brothers, have strayed from the path.  I know that you have followed our prince, the very child of the Prime Scion of Light, into a place of heresy and confusion.  You have been tricked, and you have fallen—as we all may fall.

“But you have not been abandoned.  And though you may have turned your eyes away for a time, I see them now seeking the Light—for amnesty, for clarity, for glorification, for all the purpose and joy that its service brings.

“And you will find those things, for when the Light rises again and you are bathed in its great radiance, you will be freed of fear.  You will be scoured of your crimes and emptied of all your torments, and you will know peace and grace as you are remade in the image of our god.  This I promise you: that there is nothing you have done that can not be forgiven, and no harm done to you that can not be made whole.

“This is a night for praising, a night for raising yourselves up from the mire of Dark thoughts and desires.  We shall begin with the mourning chant '
How Lost In Deepest Night
', and then through the dirges to the paeans as before.  Those of you who still do not know the songs, please pay attention; it is vital that our voices align by Darkness Day Eve.  Now, we begin.”

The priest launched directly into plainsong, his strong dramatic tenor ringing out over the silent crowd.  A moment later, a host of ruengriin picked up the drone note, bass voices rolling a heavy counterpoint that made Sarovy think of a bird skimming over a dark sea, ever in danger of being consumed by the waves.  Cautiously he murmured the words—known but rusty, unsung for nearly a decade before last night.

Note by note, more voices joined, quiet at first as old memories kindled but then more firmly, the easy cadence drawing in men who had learned to march to harder tunes.  Glancing down, Sarovy saw a few of the non-Imperials mouthing the chorus, faces screwed up in concentration.  A singing crowd made others want to sing, faithful or not.  Even the white-robed mages joined in, their voices fine but none with Cortine's strength.

Once remembered, the song came automatic to Sarovy, so he let his gaze wander.  He could not bear to look long at his soldiers.  Beyond them, the walls glowed with faint warded light, a persistence that made sleep difficult even for the most tired.  He wished he could take comfort in it, but some part of him—some essential element of faith—was gone.

Something flickered at the corner of his vision.  The entry hall.  He glanced there but saw nothing amiss, the wards the same brightness as always...

Glancing back at Cortine and his robed assemblage, he saw that Scryer Yrsian and Magus Voorkei were not singing.  Yrsian was smiling ever so slightly.

The wards behind her, which lit the front hall with its many windows, went out.

The song slid from Sarovy's mind, and for a moment he stood open-mouthed, on the cusp of shouting the alarm.  Yrsian and Voorkei still maintained some of the wards, he knew, but the white-robes had been scrambling to take over from them due to the lapse with the holding cells.  As another set of upstairs wards flickered and failed, he realized they were far from done.

His hand fell to his pocket, to the eiyetakri.  Perhaps—

No.  The Shadows were still the enemy, and he had a responsibility to his men.

“To arms!” he shouted, but the drone-line was loud, and as cutting as his own voice could be, Cortine's still rang over it.  His lieutenants looked askance at him, perhaps suspecting mutiny.  Their mouths still shaped the ritual words.

A set of wards on a wall in the assembly hall went out, and his fear painted an image of his men swallowed before him.  It gave him all the drive he needed.

“
TO ARMS!
” he shouted again, moving up the stairs at the same time, and glimpsed heads turning, heard voices falter.  Up to the balcony he went, toward his door—his sword and shield—half-turned all the way to roar, “
ALL TO ARMS!  THE SHADOW STRIKES!
”

Cortine's song broke.  As he pushed into his office, he heard the priest say, “Captain, you are not excused—“

Then came a roar like wind in the throat of a chasm, and a shaking—a rending, full of the sound of shattering timbers.  Voices rose in surprise and fear.

Sarovy took two steps into his office before he registered that the wards inside were gone.

From the shadow of the privacy screen came a dark-garbed figure, with a dull-black weapon that could have been a club or a blade—too hard to tell in the sudden gloom.  And another from the corner behind the door, and another from his immediate right.

For once, he was grateful to be a monster.

He went straight for the one by the privacy screen, driving in with his shoulder, indifferent to the weapon.  It punched through the side of his uniform jacket, but though a burning sensation spread from the wound, there was no actual pain, and no stopping him as he bowled the man over.  The blade, hitched in his coat, yanked free of his assailant's hand as Sarovy stumble-stepped over him.

He knew the placement of his gear even in the dark.  His heirloom blade came to his hand as if called, his shield much the same; alas for the armor, as even the chain hauberk would take too much time to don, and the enemies were already breathing down his neck.  So he turned and caught a ringing blow on his shield, stabbed out blindly with the heirloom blade and felt it skim across leather.  Shoved forward hard and hit someone in the face and chest with the shield.

The privacy screen went down under the enemy's weight.  He heard furniture crunch and the whisper of papers scattering.  The other shadow moved in on his right, trying to take advantage of the gloom, but the fall of the screen had let in enough light to cast him in silhouette, and Sarovy hacked without finesse until his vigor drove the shorter-bladed cultist out the door.

The others were getting up.  He swatted his shield into the face of the one who had brought down the screen, but the other came at him from low and aside, and he felt a blade carve his leg.  The burning erupted there as well, and he half-turned to guard himself as he stepped through the doorway.

On the balcony, all was chaos.

He could spare only a glance for his surroundings, but to his right he saw straight into the midnight street.  A massive portion of the building's façade had been torn away, including all the windows and a chunk of the hall, and there were figures out there, limned by lantern-light.  Figures with crossbows.

From the other direction, by the meeting room, emerged a band of cultists from a wide black hole.  Down below, soldiers milled by the doors of their bunkrooms—at least one of which opened into nothing, the entire chamber torn away.

At the banister stood Cortine, keening a wordless song; Tanvolthene, spellcasting; and the white-robed aides staring fixedly at Yrsian and Voorkei.  Yrsian had torn her blindfold away with her thumb and now stared back with equal force.

Then Lieutenant Linciard was there at the top of the stairs, armorless and weaponless and cutting between Sarovy and the approaching cultists as he made for his door.  Sarovy saw their crossbows rise.

“Drop down!” Sarovy snapped, moving forward like a broken marionette—his stabbed leg dragging, the other blade still hanging half-in him.  Given the chance, he might have tried to slough off whatever toxin the cultists had hit him with, but this was not the time for experiments.

To his credit, Linciard obeyed without question—without even looking.  Bolts flew true only to clatter off the shield as Sarovy stepped over his lieutenant.  In his wake, Linciard half-rose and shoved open his door, only to have someone grunt on the other side.  Linciard cursed.

“'Ware shadows,” said Sarovy.

“No shit, sir.”

Normally Sarovy was not one for sass but it was a welcome sign that the man was under his own control.  Tucking his shield in, he grabbed the transfixing blade's hilt with that hand, yanked it out and dropped it at his feet, then kicked it back toward Linciard.  “Sword,” he said, and heard the scrape as the lieutenant took it up.

Another volley scattered off his shield, one bolt taking him in the knee.  It felt the same as the other cuts: the burning and a sluggishness in the affected part but nothing worse, nothing that mattered.  At his back, he sensed Linciard rise, and heard a door swing open.

“Pikes,” swore the lieutenant.

Blades clashed behind him, and Linciard cursed—once, twice, then rapid-fire, as if it was another weapon against the horde.  He dared not step away and leave the man's back unguarded, but the crossbowmen were not approaching; they seemed happy to stand in that corner and shoot, their escape route right at hand.

So Sarovy retreated, bumping against Linciard and turning his shield to guard the man's flank.  The lieutenant made a sound of alarm but caught on quickly and shifted, letting Sarovy take his place at the doorway.  Two cultists lurked there, faces black-streaked and aspects fierce, but as he filled the doorway with his shield they fell back a step in caution.

Magic flashed: Tanvolthene, perhaps.  Another set of quarrels peppered him, the shield no longer in line to save him.  Down below, the sounds of confusion had become shouts and clashing steel, and the sweet-poison scent of controllers' power wafted up on the night wind, laced with the tang of blood.

Cortine's song rose suddenly, like a clarion, and then—

Light.

A great flare cast his shadow before him and made all the crossbow-wielders flinch, their black portal vanishing at their backs.  Others cried out, and he heard Linciard's exclamation of victory, heard steel in flesh.  The cultists in Linciard's room recoiled, hands rising toward their eyes, and Sarovy almost pursued, but clamped down on his instincts and stepped back instead.  If they wanted him, they would have to come out.

The reprieve let him swing his shield forward to block the visibly frustrated crossbow-wielders.  One had discarded her weapon and was advancing, two forearm-length blades at the ready.  He recognized her: the one who had put a bolt in his face at Old Crown.

Then the cultists from Linciard's room were on him again, leaving no time for thought.

He had not fought in such close quarters in ages, nor ever been without armor in battle.  Even his new advantages could not turn the tide against two—then three, then four and the woman—all pressing at him with blades just short enough to keep at bay.  He would have liked to step forward, to push them back into the bottleneck of the hall; this balcony area was wider and it was all he could do to keep them from circling him, to keep their blades from his sword-arm and the very real possibility that they could slice it off.  Already he burned in a dozen places, the bolts twitching inside him with every move.

Linciard still swore up a storm.  From the corner of his eye Sarovy glimpsed a second blade in the man's grip, another captured enemy weapon, but also saw the blood running out from his slashed sleeves.  Beyond him, Cortine glowed like a manifestation of the Light, arms raised and head thrown back, white eyes blazing in their sockets and flesh somehow incandescent through his robe.  But though his flare had pushed back the malevolent shadows, it did little more than make the cultists squint.

And the enemies on the street were shooting in at him, their bolts skipping off a ward Tanvolthene strove to maintain.  The other mages remained engaged.

Heavy steps ascended the stairs.  There was a cultist between Sarovy and that gap, so he could not see—until suddenly that cultist was yanked backward with a yelp and thrown over the banister.

Grinning, Vrallek forced himself into the fray, and finally Sarovy had a moment to breathe.

He didn't take it, turning to Linciard's aid instead.  One of the cultists who had pursued him from his office was down, but there were three more in the hall now, and another shooting at Cortine from the doorway.  Sarovy went for her first, heirloom sword coming up to dash the wooden stock from her hands then cut deeply into her arms, and the woman gasped and fell back.  Stepping into the gap, Sarovy bumped Linciard into a side-on stance to give him some relief, and saw a grin flicker over the lieutenant's bloodied face.