The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (132 page)

From that position, she had enough leverage to kick his legs from under him, but he saw it coming.  She managed to get one, but he hopped back on the other, arms windmilling.

That gave her a nice opening, and she shifted her weight onto the tripping foot and lunged low to try another up-sweep and hopefully nail him under the chin.  He managed to brace himself and bring his sword across just in time to parry, vermillion sparks flying everywhere.

As their hilts locked, she grabbed his right wrist and tried to force the bodythief needles out from beneath her nails.  Her bracer spasmed, unprepared for the spur-of-the-moment act, and they only extended halfway—enough to slip through the armor but not enough to sting.

He tried to backhand her with the sword, failed, then punched for her throat with his offhand.  Hardened ridges cut in like razors, and she reeled back as the blood began to flow.  Threads immediately squirmed from her neck to bind the wound, and an effort of will sent more Palace material to reinforce it.

Advantage lost, she spent several moments backpedaling from his pursuit, until a chill went up her spine—not fear but proximity.  She dared not look back, but knew Cob was only a few steps away.  Rallying, she swapped Serindas to her left hand and slapped Erevard's next cut aside, then moved into his advance, slamming her other hand into the joint of his shoulder.

He teetered sideways, caught himself and tried to withdraw, but her heel found the back of his knee and bent it.  Unwilling to tip, he flung himself violently away, crashing down onto the bridge with one leg off before managing to haul himself to safety.  She skittered after him and managed to stick him opportunistically in the knee, but had to pull back as he regained his feet.

For a moment, they stared at each other from just beyond sword-reach.  His armor had sealed his wounds but his shoulders hung heavier, a sign that he was in pain.  Adrenaline had numbed her own injuries but they couldn't make her dagger longer.  With that armor and his skill, she couldn't cut him fast enough to kill him; either she got a lucky hit between his eyes, or she stuck Serindas in him long enough to suck him dry.

Difficult with Cob constantly pushing her forward.

Just get him out of the way
, she thought. 
Finish him later.

Only the mission matters.

She advanced; he slashed; she parried.  He backstepped, then came in again with a thrust.  She feigned a block but moved into the blade instead, catching it between arm and side as it bit into the outermost threads, then clamped her left hand on his wrist.  Her needles punched through his armor this time, sending weakening toxins into his blood.

Serindas dove for his sword-arm but he caught her wrist in turn, arresting the red blade as it touched the armor.  She felt the rot start eating at her Palace mass, but in her debilitating grip he couldn't twist the black sword, couldn't tear it out.  Shifting forward, she clamped her foot-spurs on the bridge and forced her right arm down hard to keep his attention on Serindas.

She could almost see him gritting his teeth under the helm, all his strength focused in his pulling shoulder and leading foot.  Their stances overlapped just enough that neither had good leverage to finish the kill—nor could they retreat without giving the other an opening.

So Dasira did neither.

Instead, with a shift of her weight and a wrench of her hips, she pulled in response to Erevard's push and felt his back foot leave the ice.  As his front one went up on tiptoe, he tried to fling himself away as he had before, but her low-slung frame and foot-spurs gave her the advantage, and with another mighty twist she sent his feet right over the edge.  Her needles snapped off in his wrist as she released him, grabbing the black sword's quillons to keep it hers.

He tried to hold on, but the toxin had done its work.  The black blade slid barely an inch before his grip broke and he plunged into the pit.

“Too bad,” she told the water that swallowed him.  “Need more practice fighting short women.”

As she unstuck the sword from her side, the rot in her gut arrested, damaged parts flaking away like ash.  Black lightning raced from the hilt into her hand, then up her arm to collide with Serindas' red, but she smacked their flats together to forestall their duel.  Chastised, Serindas fell quiet, and the new sword declared itself Reivus.

She looked up just in time to see a light flare out from the direction of the dais.

Instinctively she ducked and felt her clothes flash-dry in the wash of heat, her fair hair crisping.  A roiling teakettle sound came from behind and she realized in horror that she'd just let it hit Cob.  Without thinking, she lashed Reivus upward; if Serindas could absorb energy, then maybe this one could—

The blade's scream tore through her nerves.  Smoke poured off it, thick and noxious like a burning midden, and while it succeeded in scattering the beam of light, what she drew back as it lapsed no longer looked like a sword.  Chunks of its surface had seared off to expose blackened bone beneath, in the fused, compressed shape of a human arm.  As she stared, the fingers at the end spasmed, and the hilt jerked from her hand.

She tried to catch after it, but not fast enough.  It clinked off the edge of the bridge and tumbled away.

“Son of a bitch,” she said.

Ahead, some kind of swarm hit the Emperor, giving her a chance to glance at Cob.  Though he looked unscathed, his dark aura had diminished and his mouth had closed, the black tide currently stemmed.  His eyes were lightless, but she saw him blink once, ponderously.

The bridge between them cracked, his side still frozen, hers melting.

They were barely halfway across.

She turned forward to see the Emperor scatter the crows and take aim at the Guardian.  The walls, ceiling and floor had faded, their remnant radiance pouring toward the throne in six thick currents like the wings of the effigies of Light.  In their wake, great patches of despoiled blackness spread with sickening speed.   Even the ceiling was tainted; as she watched, two of the great ribs that supported the dome split apart to expose a knife of night sky

Power gathered in the Emperor's arm.  She shaded her eyes just in time, but the afterimage still branded itself on her vision: a diagonal line as wide as her thumb that stretched from the dais to where the Guardian had stood.  The crows screamed a hoarse, hideous chorus as the body crumpled.  An instant later, something like smoke or shadow fled upward, escaping through the hole in the ceiling.

Her stomach dropped.  No allies remained between her and the Emperor, and as she watched, the wraith swept down, snatched Prince Kelturin's sword, then shot out through the gap after the Guardian.

Against all sanity, she charged forward, desperate to cross her side of the bridge before it broke.  She couldn't survive a blazing shot, but if she was lucky, she could dodge it.  If she wasn't, she'd at least have given Cob another moment.  And if it went for Cob...

She couldn't think of that.

Her spurs dug hard into the fragile ice.  Tracking the Emperor's gaze made it impossible to watch her step, but with each footfall she felt the bridge weakening, narrowing.  She couldn't even see the end.  As the radiance heightened, all vision fled, and she took one more stride, felt the ice give, and flung herself desperately ahead.

Furnace-heat washed over her, and she was falling, falling—

Something slammed into her chest.  By reflex, she stabbed out with Serindas and felt it sink into solid floor, the edge jerking up into her armpit hard enough to strain her shoulder.  Her feet kicked wildly, shredding strips from the tattered edge; one hit the melting remnant of a support-strut and knocked it loose.

With all her might, she hauled herself up, only to watch as the Emperor raised his burning hand toward Cob and the remains of the bridge.

*****

Through the layers of gelid darkness, he'd watched the light come with a sense of welcome.  This was what he'd wanted, after all.  From the very start, he'd sought its scorching judgment to wash away the guilt he felt—for the man he'd killed, for his mother, and for all the others he'd harmed and failed.

When it hit, though, it showed him nothing.  It just burned.

Water flashed to steam; cold gave way to searing fire.  Even with his hand raised to shade his eyes, the brightness of the beam made sight impossible.  Judgment lay in the Emperor's gaze, but he couldn't meet it through the glare.

Desperate, he forced himself forward.

The light did not resist him; it had no pressure, unlike the Void at his back.  Protected by the barrier of his skin, the dark gateway had not closed, and he felt the emptiness there, still whispering.

Quench the light.

Break the Portal.

Bring them down, bring them all down to us.

He couldn't think enough to deny it, but neither could he fight his soul's need.  World narrowing to the width of the beam, he took another step, and another.  He had to reach the throne—had to see, no matter what it cost him.

And if the Light and the Dark struck at each other through him, so be it.

*****

Enkhaelen grimaced as energy flooded out to power the Emperor's beam.  The skin around the aperture was flaking, his arms and chest beginning to sear as the exposure infringed on his biological heat tolerance.  Too much more and his fire-blood would take over, and they'd all be piked.

Fortunately, he still had cards to play.

Frequent distractions had allowed the metastatic blackness to creep to the very foot of the throne, and he reached for it now with the frayed resonance of his being.  It was not under his control; that enchantment had been held by his corpse-body, and with its destruction, the binds upon the contagion's growth and virulence were gone.

But it knew him.  He had twisted it together from a thousand plagues and cancers, a thousand dying bodies and willing sacrifices, and though it had no real sentience, it recognized the taste of him and surged in his direction.

Threads of blackness ran up the web-like material of the throne—first one, then ten, then hundreds, soaking up the ambient energy as they chewed through the bonds Geraad had weakened.  With his arms still covering the Portal, they managed to get within six inches of its aperture before the punishing radiance boiled them away.

That was enough.

As blackness freed his face and flowed into his mouth to clear his jaws, he managed to turn his head enough to reach his right hand.  Four centuries of nail-growth kept it tangled in the strands of the broken wall, but his teeth were sharp; a bite and a twist broke the first nail away in a brittle snap.  He did the same for the second, then the third.

At the corner of his eye, the sunbeam held strong.  In any other situation, he would have been impressed by Cob's tenacity, but now it was just sand in a time-glass, running out.

He couldn't reach the fourth finger, so he jerked his arm with all his strength and felt a tearing pain as the nail split down to the quick.  If not for the remnants of his thread-gag, he would have screamed; it had been so long since he'd felt something beside the Portal's ache that he'd forgotten normal pain.  Half the nail snapped in the next yank, but the other half came out at the root and his nerves shrieked their indignation.

He ignored them and did the same for the fifth.  He would not lose to petty details.

And then his hand was free—his fingers atrophied to near uselessness, his forearm just skin and bone.  But that didn't matter.  He had no need to fight.

Instead, he reached for the prism that glittered in Geraad's scorched palm.

His twisted pose brought him up short.  Grimacing, he relaxed his left arm to gain more reach, but that act revealed the Portal, which scoured away the black contagion that had freed him.  As the white threads moved in to reinforce his bonds, he kicked furiously, managing to move himself half-off the throne before they could arrest him.  His fingers scored bloody marks on the floor as he clawed for the prism.

His fingers brushed its surface, and it tilted—away, right there yet still too far to grasp.  Beyond it lay Geraad's slumped form, and though he told himself not to look, he couldn't help it.  The mage's face was surprisingly pristine, with cheeks a bit scorched and eyes blood-filled but otherwise almost fine.  From the ears back, though, everything was charcoal.

Emotion clenched in his chest, but he willed it away.  There was no time to be maudlin.  If he didn't finish this, all the deaths he'd caused would be rendered pointless.  He owed his victims a victory.

But his left arm was piking stuck.  So close and yet he couldn't—

His eyes narrowed.  Carefully, deliberately, he braced his right arm against the throne's base and then pulled—jerked—twisted until his left shoulder popped.

Agony shot stripes across his vision, but he fell forward on another half-inch of straining tendon, just enough to clamp his fingertips on the prism.  When he tried to pull himself upright, his dislocated shoulder refused, and so he hung there for a moment, marshaling his will, before raising the prism to his chest.

It wasn't glass, for glass—like all terrestrial materials—would have vaporized in the light.  Instead, he'd spent nearly two centuries learning how to denature and recast wraith-crystal into a form that could withstand the concentrated gaze of the Outsider, and another few decades refining the internal conformation.  This final product was composited from a dozen alternating wedges, its end cut into concave facets.  With luck, the light that passed through would be scattered beyond use.