The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (136 page)

“But if you die, the Seals snap back, and the Ravager—“

“I don't care!”  In the dim light, his eyes glittered with madness, teeth bared through a film of black slime.  “I destroyed it all—my family, my life, the world I knew.  It's gone.  Let me go with it!”

“I can't.”

“Give me the sword, then, and I'll do it myself!“

Cob pushed him back again and took a few steps' distance, mind whirling.  “I don't understand.  Why would you enchant something against yourself, why would you want to be ripped apart—“

“Why would you torment me?” the necromancer screeched.  “Just kill me!  You want it, everyone wants it, just act!”

Slowly, Cob shook his head.  It wasn't that he'd stopped hating the man.  He hadn't, and probably couldn't, not just for his parents but for all the others Enkhaelen had massacred.

But he was tired of giving in to his anger.  Tired of causing as much harm as what he'd sought to fix.  If he let the necromancer provoke him, the new disasters would be on his shoulders, and he couldn't live with that.

He braced himself for a push from the Void, but felt nothing.  It was gone.  Somewhere between Dasira and now, the door had quietly swung shut.

“Why?” rasped Enkhaelen, face tight with dismay.  “What in pike's name do you think you can do without killing me?”

Cob swallowed and felt his dry throat click.  This was the gamble.  He didn't want to speak these words—didn't want to do this, no matter how necessary.  If Enkhaelen refused...

“The right thing,” he said finally.  “You're gonna come with me and replace the Seals.”

Enkhaelen gave an incredulous little laugh, then launched himself for the silver sword.  It took all Cob's will not to stab him, and for a moment they struggled, the necromancer's ragged nails scoring long lines on Cob's good arm.  Even when Cob forced him back, the man continued scratching at him viciously enough to draw blood.

Then he stilled, fever-hot fingers locked on and suddenly frigid.  A jolt ran through Cob as he remembered the necromancer reopening his old wounds with this same enervating cold.  He tried to pull away but couldn't, the silver sword slumping in his benumbed grip.

“Idiot,” said Enkhaelen, soft and low.  “You're just a human now.  Don't think you can dictate terms to me.  I hadn't planned to kill you, but since you insist...”

“Seals first, then we find your daughter.”

Enkhaelen's eyes flared wide, the cold intensifying enough to draw frost from the air.  Cob winced at its bite, prepared to die, but after a moment it weakened.  “What?” said the necromancer faintly.

“Your daughter.  Mariss, yeah?  I've met her.  She's alive.”

“You're lying.  You're
lying
—“

“I'm not.  She wanted her mother's sword.”

Shock-blue eyes searched his, then lost focus, staring into nothing.  The cold dissipated.  Cob broke Enkhaelen's grip with ease, and when the necromancer didn't react, he stepped back long enough to trade the silver sword for the knife on the floor.

“You gonna fight me?” he said as he leaned in to where the threads still bound the man to the wall.

Enkhaelen didn't respond.

Happy with that, Cob got to work cutting him free.  Though Enkhaelen had managed to tear himself a few feet of leeway, the main mass of his hair was still stuck in the wall—yards and yards of it, black against the white.  The knife wasn't meant for such things, forcing Cob to go lock by lock as he contemplated scalping the poor bastard.  Setting and then freeing his left arm was easier, the Palace threads loose and rotting, but his fingernails were cringe-inducing.  Two had actually grown through his palm, and the wounds left after their retraction wept clear fluid rather than blood.  As Cob straightened the atrophied fingers, he saw a silver band on the ringfinger.

It was the only thing he wore, the rest of him coated in torn strands and pallid mucus.  Cob cut his feet free too, then shucked his robe and forced the necromancer into it, but when he tried to stand him up, Enkhaelen just crumpled.

Annoyed but resigned, Cob stuck the knife and sword into the frayed remnants of his belt, then carried the necromancer down under his good arm like baggage.  The tiny light bobbed along in their wake.

“I think I broke him,” he explained to Arik's quizzical look.

Fiora looked too—and then surged to her feet, fists clenched.  “What are you doing?” she snapped.  “Why is he still alive?”

“We can't kill him.  The Seals—“

“He's too dangerous alive!”

She strode forward, reaching for the sword, and he turned his hip away to prevent it.  “Fiora,” he said carefully, “if there was any other option, I'd take it.  But he needs to fix what he broke.  He can't do that if he's dead.”

“The next Ravager can!”

“No, not really.”

Glaring up at him, she said, “You won't succeed.  The moment he's strong enough, he'll kill you.”

“He didn't.”

“That's because he knew we were here.”

Ignoring Enkhaelen's faint scoff, Cob said, “We can't fight about this.  It doesn't matter how any of us feel; he has to do it.  We can talk about justice or judgment afterward.”

Her eyes narrowed.  He wanted to say something more—
I agree with you
, or
I understand
, or
I love you
—but before he could speak, she said, “I'm leaving.”

His mouth wouldn't form words.

“I need to report to my temple,” she continued, then nodded toward the prince's mob.  “Heard them talking about portals.  I'm gonna ask if they can make one to Cantorin.  You should have a day or two before we start hunting you.”

“Wh—  What?”

“He's one of our oldest enemies,” she said, withdrawing a step.  “Our leadership won't take kindly to hearing that he's been freed.”

“Fiora—“

“Sorry.  Best of luck.”

With that, she turned away to quick-walk toward the Imperials.  He stared after her open-mouthed, terrified by what might happen but unable to cry out.  There were mages among them now, and priests, and two familiar women with their arms around a third.  As Fiora approached, the lot of them turned to look at her—then made way at the prince's gesture.

She disappeared among them.

Cob felt his chest constrict.  The air came thin through his teeth, and the itch of his eyes made him raise his hand to scrub them—then flinch as his burns flared.  Everything was dry and brittle and painful, and though he tried to choke it down, the hurt took over his tongue.  He kept from spitting curses after her, but mumbled, “Nothing I do is right.”

Enkhaelen snorted.

It took Cob's last ounce of will to resist dropping him on his face.  Instead, he lowered him gently, then moved out of arm's reach to sit with Arik, who immediately rested his wolfy head against Cob's shoulder.  As the lights of the prince's group moved off down a corridor, he stared into the pit and tried not to feel the red cord's tug.

A period of silence followed, with nothing to see but the expanding edge of the pit and the few survivors who climbed out and slunk away.  None approached them, for which Cob was glad.  He'd already done too much, and he wasn't finished yet.

Finally, with a grunt of effort, Enkhaelen rolled himself over.  “If you're serious about this, we need to start with the Seal of Air,” he said.  “It's there, all the way at the top, and I'll need energy to replace it.”

Cob followed the man's pointing finger to the ceiling above the throne.  “How d'we get there?”

“Spiral walkway up the central Needle.  Covered in Palace gunk right now.  It should slough off eventually, so while we wait, I'd appreciate if you'd fetch me Geraad.”

Eyes narrowing, Cob said, “Why?  He's—“

Then a thought occurred that flipped his heart in his chest.  He choked on his eagerness the first time he tried to speak, but on the second time managed, “You're a necromancer, you mess with souls.  Can you bring him back?  Or Das?”

“Das?”  Enkhaelen sighed.  “Shouldn't be surprised.  No.  In different circumstances, perhaps, but it's already been too long.  Death Herself will have them, and I've not the strength to wrestle with her.”

“Then why?”

“To harvest him for energy.  Them, if you'll bring her too.”

Cob lurched to his feet, incensed.  “It's not enough you got them killed, you have to—“

The necromancer's laugh halted him.  Wedging up on his elbows, the man fixed a cold eye on him and said, “You jump at the thought of using my skills, but would refuse me the fuel I need?  They're gone, Cob.  I can't hurt them anymore, and what's the use of leaving them to rot?  We could drag them along with us until I regained the strength to fight off Death's minions, but it would still be too late.  Just get them and let me put them to rest, for both our sakes.”

“They're—  She was my friend.  I can't let you jus' defile her.”

“The corpse is not her.  Even had it been her original body, it's still not her.  You said it yourself when we met: this is just meat.”  He exhaled, then said, “Think of it as sky burial, and the Ravager as a very large bird.”

Cob grimaced, but could find no other argument than
I don't want this
.  It took a few moments to steel himself, but then he headed for the dais without a word, waving Arik off as the skinchanger started to rise to his aid.

The effort of going up and then climbing back down with the scorched body made his right arm throb.  He laid it down as carefully as he could, then pulled Dasira over as well, trying not to look.  By the time he finished, Enkhaelen had managed to get up on his knees, and set a hand on each cold face as Cob stepped back.

He took a deep breath, and the harvest began.

It was not the blue-black nimbus of shadow and skeletization Cob had seen at Riftwatch.  Instead, a glow began at Enkhaelen's fingertips and then stretched out through each body in a lattice of warm light, strengthening until it filled both of the fallen with ethereal fire.  Every detail came into stark relief—every nail, scratch, eyelash, a perfect image of them both.

Then the bright lattices contracted, retreating by inches from the limbs to the torsos and leaving fine ash in their wake.  As they shrank, the light intensified until Cob could barely look at them.  A glance up showed him thin fiery threads worming through Enkhaelen's arms—perhaps his veins, taking in the power as the bodies burned.  Soon he couldn't look at the necromancer either, and turned away, the afterimages imprinted sharply on his eyes.

It took some time for the glow to fade.  When he finally looked back, the pyres were out, nothing left of the bodies but clothes and ash.  A faint radiance was dying on Enkhaelen's skin.  He looked better—not so waxen—but it still pained Cob to know that those deaths had fed him.

As if aware of his thoughts, Enkhaelen glanced up at him.  “They were my comrades too,” he said quietly.  “Longer than they were yours.  I could have done better by them, but she refused to take a new body and he insisted on following me.  I won't let their loyalty mean nothing.”

Cob bit back a hard retort, all too aware that Dasira had probably declined the offer for his sake.  Instead he caught the necromancer under the arm and hauled him upright.

“Stop it, I can—  Oh,” said Enkhaelen as his legs unhinged.  “Or not.”

Bone-thin, he wasn't difficult for Cob to drag away and plant by the wolf.  “Ravager can't fix you?” he said as he stood over them, not wanting to sit—not yet capable of making nice—but knowing he should try.

“Muscle atrophy is not an injury.  It won't be remedied so easily.”

“I better not have to ca—
aaaa!
”
he yelped as Enkhaelen suddenly nabbed his burnt wrist.  His first instinct was to punch the necromancer in the head, but the man's grip lightened, becoming exploratory, and his face held consideration rather than malice.

“Painful?” he said, pressing along the inside of Cob's forearm.

“Very,” Cob responded through his teeth.

The necromancer made a thoughtful sound, but as he explored toward Cob's palm, the pain lessened—becoming more of a tight discomfort.  “Partial thickness burn,” he mumbled, “fairly deep.  Peeling.  Light eschar on the finger-pads.  Can you feel this?”

Cob's stomach did a slow roll as he realized the necromancer was pinching his fingertips without causing any sensation.  “No.”

“Kneel down, I need to see your face.”

Obeying, Cob fixed his stare over the necromancer's shoulder as those unnaturally warm fingers prodded his cheeks and pressed painfully at the bridge of his nose.  “You're lucky you're dark-skinned,” Enkhaelen said after a while.  “And that you didn't take a beam in the eyes.  Though why you blocked it with the palest place on your body, I don't know.”

“So it's not bad?”

“Not on your face.  I can't do anything for your hand in my current state, but after I replace this Seal, if I have the energy...”  He shrugged slightly.  “If you were alone, you might lose the whole hand, but with me you'll lose the tips of your fingers at most.”

He looked down at them, skin crawling.  “But they don't hurt.”