The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (130 page)

Staring up, he saw for the first time how artificial his father's face was—and felt, in the Palace's substance, the bipedal outgrowth that stood before him.  A sculpture, a finger-puppet, a woven approximation of a man.

The steps beneath him unraveled, threads rising to drag him down.  Desperately he swung again, but though the blade cleaved through the shining face, its smile never changed.

*****

As the prince fell, Fiora raised her sword.

The sheen of her goddess's power still veiled her as it had at Erestoia, and though the heat was intense, it did not hurt.  Such was the blessing of the Trifold.  So long as she stepped softly and avoided the Emperor's eyes, she would be—

“You.”

Her heart leapt in her throat.  Surely the Emperor couldn't have seen her.  She was at the lip of the dais now, only three steps from Enkhaelen in his straitjacket, and there wasn't enough of the white stuff to keep the silver sword from splitting his skull.  She couldn't possibly fail.

But his eyes were fixed on her, blue as old ice, even though she knew she was invisible.

“You.  Girl.”

A white-hot hand reached for her shoulder but she skittered out of reach—regretting it instantly as the Emperor stepped into the gap between her and her prey.  His overwhelming radiance made it impossible to spy an alternate route, and though she raised the sword threateningly, she knew she dared not swing.  With her luck, it would melt against his flesh.

“I see you in there,” he said.  His voice was calm, almost pleasant, and for a sickening moment she remembered her father in the doorway: his sad smile, his hopeless eyes.  He had gone to his death at this entity's command.  The urge to attack was overwhelming.

No.  Finish the job.  He can't harm me or he'd have done it.  Just pass him by.

She squared her shoulders and was about to try when he said, “We had a deal.  How dare you send an agent against me?”

“Deal?” she said without meaning to.

“Yes, Loahravi, a deal.  An alliance.  I do not understand your treachery.  Is this how we petty gods are supposed to act?  For I can pay you back in kind.”

Her mouth dropped open but no sound came out.  He was mocking her—he had to be.  Why else would he invoke the Blood Goddess's name?  He had overheard Dasira's accusation and chosen to use it against her, to stall her—

But she remembered the nightmare-god outside Enkhaelen's manor, speaking the same insinuations.  She felt the ache in her womb, the tiny child that should have barred her from the sword but somehow, despite all precedent, did not.

Ignore him!

She tried.  Face averted from his glare, she moved in sideways, holding the blade across her body to protect it from the heat.  Only a few feet separated its tip from the necromancer's neck, and by the gleam in those blue eyes, he welcomed it.  Furnace-light raged at her back, but she took a step, then another, and raised the blade—

Something snagged her back leg, yanking her off-balance.  Aware that it was the white tendrils, she lurched forward with all she had, extending the sword to its full hand-and-a-half reach.  It cut air mere inches from Enkhaelen's face.  In desperation, she swapped it to her leading hand and lashed out again, fighting its weight.

The tendrils took her around the waist a moment too soon, yanking her backward.  Her swing hit the Emperor in the side, and the sword melted at the point of contact.  She tried to fight but more tendrils lashed around her chest and snared her hair, and as they dragged her down it was all she could do to fling the sword off the dais, out of reach.

“We will discuss this later,” said the Emperor.

Then the Palace had her.

*****

A burning shaft punctured Weshker's side, and he lurched away from the White Flame he was mauling.  Above, the Emperor took aim again, forcing him to duck and dodge among the soldiers to avoid further beams.

Even one hit felt like too much.  Inside his dark encasement, he was exhausted, too much of his energy bent toward repairing his injuries.  Many White Flames lay dead at his feet, but he had not managed another swipe at the Field Marshal.  Rackmar stood now on a low step of the dais, cradling his mangled left arm in its white bindings, with ranks and ranks of his men in the way and more still emerging from a corner door.

Another dizzying blast had Weshker leaping back, fur smouldering.  The crows screamed at him to bound past the White Flames, to pounce upon Rackmar—to finish what he'd started—but the Guardian quailed at the thought of getting so close to the Emperor.  It didn't want to be here anymore.  Not after finally seeing the Light.

Through him, it had watched the failed assaults on the dais and discovered the mistake in its plans.  Great Spirit or not, it still wore a vessel of flesh, and this foe was beyond such things.  Enkhaelen lay there on the throne, exposed, but he might as well have been a thousand miles away for all the likelihood that the Guardian would reach him unscathed.

Weshker gritted his teeth.  His sole ally Erevard was gone, having run off just after the floor-shaking blast, and while the wiry strength in his legs would let him leap straight at the Field Marshal, too many of the White Flames held pike-like weapons.  Even if the Emperor didn't ignite him, he'd be skewered before he could fall upon his prey.

Another flare came, and he flinched back only to realize it was directed elsewhere.  Something bright darted through the air on the other side of the dais, back and forth like a glass needle trying to prick the throne.  Not a friend, but a welcome distraction.

The White Flames surged forward again, then faltered as he retreated to the damaged floor.  It was black with malignant growth, creeping inexorably toward the pristine area around the throne and raising lumpy little fingers toward any white boot that got near it.  Though it didn't harm him, he understood their aversion; it made him queasy on a spiritual level, its only goal corruption.

And yet...

It was organic.  Fleshy, fungal, mutative.  Alive.

The Guardian had commanded worse.

Reaching out, he felt it respond, and
pulled
at its horrid substance.  Strings and beads of blackness flowed toward him, making the White Flames balk.  He'd seen the Emperor burning away the stuff up there, but with effort; if it could confer any sort of resistance to those searing beams, then he would happily sacrifice himself to it.

Another pull, and it flowed across his feet, up his ankles—and then into his veins, injecting itself as a rush of toxic heat.  His legs pulsed and burned, but he gripped hard with the Guardian's power to prevent any physical change.  As more rushed up his body, he tried to fashion it like armor, but it wouldn't stay solid more than a moment before sinking into his skin.

Pike it
, he thought, and waded forward.

The White Flames tried to recoil, but Rackmar's shouts stopped them.  Only a few dared advance, though, allowing Weshker to tear into the first two with dripping black claws and evade a pike, then a sword.  As the metastases climbed higher, he felt the spirit-bond on his shoulder fray and snap, raising tangled masses of wings all across his body.

He barely noticed, too focused on the black marks he left on his foes.  The two he'd struck retreated among their comrades, but he saw one collapse and the other stagger, raising hands to scratch at his faceless helm.  The weapons that connected with him drew back tainted, their wielders flinging them away at the first opportunity.

Test complete.

Black stuff flooding around his feet, he tamped down and took aim.  Rackmar was descending the dais, face waxen as if suddenly realizing that his vantage made him a target; he would die first, because going after Enkhaelen might be the last thing Weshker ever did.  As the Guardian's strength infused him, he bared his teeth in a vengeful snarl.

Then he leapt, spring-loaded fox legs taking him over the crowd to slam into the Field Marshal's fleeing back.  Enameled steel tore away beneath his claws, and the man gave a cry of shock and staggered a half-step further.

White Flames piled onto Weshker before he could pursue.  Swords, shields and pikes battered at him, and though he tainted all he touched, they didn't recoil this time.  He roared his rage, but there were too many to break through.  By instinct, he moved for the high ground, thinking to spring above the crowd again.

As he started up the dais, the toxicity slipped his grip, and his muscles clenched—then spasmed, tearing free of bone and skin to form their own bodies.  He screamed as black wings burst from his flesh, a mad mob of malformed crows sweeping out to belabor his foes and assault the focused light.  Where they struck, they stuck, blackening armor and walls alike.  As more soldiers succumbed to the corruption, it flowed to join him.

He regained control of himself just in time to see the door slam behind Rackmar's heels.

Sick fury engulfed him.  He'd lost his chance at revenge.

That left one enemy in range.

*****

Geraad saw the great black beast bound up the dais, shedding crows that wheeled in droves to assault the bright figure of the Emperor.  The hovering wraith took this opportunity to swoop for the red crystal that had fallen from the prince's grip, but the Emperor seemed to see it even through the shrieking storm; a brilliant bolt shot through the cloud to force it away.

Step by painful step, Geraad moved closer.  He'd witnessed it all from his spot below the dais, and now he stood nearly alone—the pilgrims fled, the White Flames pursuing the black beast, the mentalists distracted.  A few priests had raised paeans of praise in the far corners of the room, but the increasingly tattered floor had forced most out.

He wasn't sure of his sanity anymore.  Moments seemed to pass in syrupy slowness, nightmarish, infinite.  Beneath his mental controls, terror clawed like a trapped animal, and all he had was a knife.

He couldn't stop.

His boot hit the lowest step.  As if in a trance, he looked up.

It was madness there, black and white entangled in a blaze of wings and fire.  The dark creature fought the Emperor in a blind frenzy, tearing away shining tendrils that rewove themselves in moments and soaking up hideous strikes of the Emperor's power.  As he watched, a portion of its leg was blasted to black mist, only to congeal again and keep fighting.

How did I get here?
he thought. 
I'm just a Warder.

Wards.  Yes, he needed wards.  Even from this distance, he felt the heat being put out by the battle, and had seen the effect of the Emperor's beams.  With dreaming slowness, he traced the sigils for a ward against fire and light, and the world outside dimmed.

Breath came thinly through his lips, yet somehow he began to climb.

Why?

He didn't know.  He'd never been strong, or bold, or defiant—none of the traits that might have led him here.  Even loyalty died in the glare of the Emperor's presence.  Was it for justice?  No; the dying converts sang a dirge in the back of his mind, but though he couldn't forget what he'd seen, he could have stayed silent.

What else could it be?

And then he was at the top, stepping carefully past Wydma's black-stained bones.  Flesh and cloth had dissolved, leaving only a smeared prism behind; on instinct, he picked it up.  Then he was passing the lesser throne, and the swarming crows—their eyes upon him but indifferent, their claws aimed elsewhere—and the bright pillar of the Emperor.  The heat constricted his skin and lit up the protections on his robe and armbands.  He averted his eyes and kept going.

On the great throne, Enkhaelen huddled in his horrid shroud, and Geraad raised the knife in a hand that felt alien.  He could plunge it down and end all of this, but instead he slipped it beneath the first layer of fibers and began to saw them away.

They had thickened since he was first pulled from the wall and now held his bony arms flat to his chest, thin bright filaments protruding between them to form the cord that sustained the Emperor.  Geraad feared to cut those, sure they would be noticed, so worked to free the necromancer's arms.

no.

His brows furrowed.  Sweat soaked his robe and trickled down his sides; even with the enchanted armbands, it took most of his will to moderate the heat, leaving little for his task.  He had to do this, could not let himself be sidetracked.  There would be no second chance.

stop.  run.

He couldn't run.  That was ridiculous.

drop the prism and run.

The prism...?

He looked down at it, greasy with dark residue.  It wasn't large, its concave facets irregular but precise.  A reflection gleamed...

go go go run run

As his heat-ward cracked, he realized the storm of crows was gone.

The hand that fell upon his neck did not hurt.  Even as his hair lit, as the embroidery on his robe overloaded and his skin peeled away in flaming petals, he felt nothing.  There was just, for once, a great and vast silence, the cessation of the voices that had haunted his whole life.

Freedom—