The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (6 page)

“Do you know what happened after that?” said Cob.

“It is said that he took flight from the burning nest, headed west.  He returned a few times after, but our people have not seen him in centuries.  Is it true that he serves the Emperor?”

'The Emperor whom they call the Risen Phoenix,'
said Jeronek in his mind. 
'The firebird from the burning nest.  Perhaps the Emperor is just another mask Enkhaelen wears.'

Cob grimaced.  He would not accept that everything he had ever believed in might somehow be a part of Enkhaelen's plot to—

What?  Take revenge on his enemies?  Slow about implementing it, if so.

“Fiora,” he said, looking to her and Lark.  “Your people must know more of the firebird than you have told.”

She returned his gaze in puzzlement, and he realized he was still speaking Thiolanc.  “You haven't told me everythin',” he tried again.  “About the Trifold and Enkhaelen.  He had a Muriae wife, for pike's sake, and a Branciran elemental-in-law.”

“Elemental-in-law?” she scoffed, but shifted uneasily.

“I guess brother, but...do elementals even have genders?  —No, forget it.  Fiora...”

She raised her hands defensively.  “I'm not holding back.  I'm no historian, Cob.  We get taught about the origins of the Trifold and about our own Orders, sure, but keeping stories is the priestesses' job.  And I don't know what you've been saying.”

“Get with the others so Arik can translate,” he said.  She gave him a dirty look, then stood and offered an arm to Lark, who still looked wilted.  It occurred to him that they had been sitting there to talk privately, but that wasn't what this gathering was about.

As she passed, she cast an inscrutable look at him and said, “I can make some guesses if you insist.  My memory is murky but the times might fit.  Four hundred years?”

“Yeah.”

“There was a lot of stuff going on back then.  The Lion and Eagle War, the rape of the Heartlands.”  She made a face.  “My people poured in on the heels of that, to try to help rebuild the east.  We were purely western before then.  It was difficult, and the natives didn't exactly welcome us, but it was going all right until someone started attacking our temples.  No...not just attacking them—
slaughtering
them.  From the Mother Matriarchs down to the youngest acolytes.  When we finally organized an offensive, with some of the greatest priestesses and Justiciars of that time, we discovered it was just one man.  And he killed them all.”

After the massacre at the Riftwatch towers, Cob wasn't surprised.  The more opponents Enkhaelen had, the more havoc he seemed to wreak.  “Then what happened?”

Fiora shook her head.  “It's said that the priestesses used their dying breaths to bind his power, but it only pissed him off.  He went west like a wildfire, killing everyone in his way, and then vanished into the Thundercloaks and was never seen again.”

'By Trifolders, maybe,'
sneered Erosei.

Cob held up a hand to forestall any comments and looked to the ancient Guardian.

Erosei was his least favorite of the five former vessels.  Though they both came from the mountains of Kerrindryr, Erosei was nothing like any Kerrindrixi Cob had known.  With his head shaved but for a narrow battle-crest, he looked like the worst kind of mercenary, and stood with bare arms folded over his studded jerkin, fingertips resting on the hilts of his swords as if ready to use them.  The gleam in his black eyes gave Cob no comfort.

Go on
, Cob thought reluctantly.

Erosei grinned. 
'That was Enkhaelen.  The Trifolders piked everyone by confronting him.  After killing them, he ran off to the Hag's Needles and broke the first Seal.  Second Seal was at Aekhaelesgeria, the volcano up in Corvish country, and when he opened that, it erupted.  The Guardian before me died there.  Then he hit Varaku, and I was tapped to defend the next Seal at Howling Spire, but he threw me off the mountain and I had to chase him to Du'i Oensha.  He lit the whole Border Forest on fire to keep me away.  I only caught up with him because he had to take to sea for the final Seal at Broken Pillar.  Even then, I was too late.  That's when he really vanished.'

Did he open the last Seal?

Erosei shrugged. 
'I didn't see.  Was a bit dead at the time.'

Cob nodded.  The pieces were beginning to fall into place.  Enkhaelen and his wife had been up to dubious business here, far from the eyes of the other Muriae, but were betrayed by their copper neighbor.  The Muriae knight Orrith had come to stop them, and had stolen their creation—their child—in the process.  After the wife's death, Enkhaelen had pursued the child, taking revenge on the Trifolders who had allied with Orrith as he went.

Until they confronted him.

Something had broken in him then, worse than the death of his wife.  Had he learned the fate of his daughter?  Had she been destroyed?  Either way, his urge for vengeance had become one for annihilation, and so he'd gone after the Seals.  The greatest assault he could make against the world that had wronged him.

So why had he stopped?

'The Imperial Palace is built around the Hag's Needles.  The Seal of Air,'
said Haurah almost casually.

Cob saw again the memory of the original Sealing: that titanic larva of light being birthed into the world from the other side of the Portal.  Its glassy insectile servants, its pervasive glow scattering through them...

So much like Lady Annia's segmented eyes, or Dasira's spidery mending threads.  Like Erevard's teeth, first seen in the screaming mouths of the stellar locusts.  Like every abomination he had ever seen or sensed, Outsiders in human skin.

He didn't know how that could be, or what it said about the Emperor.  All he knew was that Enkhaelen had spent centuries in hiding, only to emerge less than twenty years ago to fight Haurah, then nine years ago to kill his father Dernyel.

Now he was everywhere.

Looking to the crowd again, Cob saw the worry on their faces.  One of the wolves asked in a small voice, “Will the firebird not return?”

“No,” said Cob curtly.  Then, after a moment, “Do you want him to?”

The wolves seemed to jostle each other for comfort, then one said, “We are dying, Guardian.  All of the skinchanging tribes live under threat, not just from loss of territory but from declining breeding stock.  In lean seasons, we send our cubs to the wolf-kin villages so that they will be fed, but they return with human ideas, human lovers.  Inevitably they leave us.  There are fewer wild packs each year, while the humans overwhelm the land.  Some day, all our children will be human, and we—and Raun our father—will cease to be.

“The firebird helped us.  While he was here, we could hunt as we desired, but now we are vulnerable to the humans and their magics.  Now we have no choice but to flee, like our ancestors fled from the lion-bloods.  We want our land and prey back.”

Before Cob could respond, Fiora said, “You eat people, don't you.”

The wolves' eyes turned toward her as Arik translated, and Fiora, still standing, weathered their attention undaunted.  “You eat humans,” she repeated, “and you want the firebird here to help you kill them.”

“There is a balance to nature, female,” said a wolf in Imperial, lips curling slightly.  Behind him, the others bristled in support.  “Wise predators cull the weak and sickly so that the strong can procreate, while strong prey cripple and kill foolish predators.  Both prosper because of the deaths they inflict on each other, and scavengers take what is left.  Humanity is a scavenger species, but their grasp of magic has elevated them from their natural place.  They drive all predators toward starvation and death.  We desire the removal of the unbalancing force.”

“So you can go back to eating us.”

“No more than we eat bears,” the wolf replied through his teeth.  “You are dangerous.  We recognize that.  We want you to remember that we are dangerous too, and strong, and that you should leave us in peace.”

“But you're not strong!” said Fiora.  “Not if you need the firebird to survive.  You're the weak and the sickly now, and if humanity destroys you, that's part of your 'balance'.“

An owl-person sneered from above.  “Says the godfollower.”

“My goddess—“

“Stop.  Stop,” said Cob sharply, aiming one at Fiora and the other at the crowd.  Though she gave Cob a dark look, Fiora shut her mouth and sat down among the others, and the gathered skinchangers and beast-folk grumbled but settled.  “I understand your concerns,” he continued in Thiolanc.  “There is a wolf in the Guardian with me, Haurah, and—“

He broke off as the wolves hackled.  “What?” he said.

They did not answer, only leaned together to whisper, their yellow eyes never wavering from him.  He glanced sidelong to where Haurah had been, but found her spot vacant.  The other Guardians still flanked him, but none returned his gaze.

“What?” he tried again, eyeing the crowd.  “What do you know that I don't?”

One of the owl-folk made a hissing sound that might have been a laugh.

A knot of anger tightened in his gut.  Planting his hooves on the altar-stone, he rose to his full height and called up the armor, dense and thorny over his skin.  The waxing mother moon hung behind him, casting his shadow forward in clean relief, and he saw skinchangers quail where it fell—felt the hearts of the gathered mortals trip faster.  In this stony clearing, they were like insects in his palm, suspended just above the turbid waters of his rage.  He could dunk them at any time.

The wolves' ears laid back, and some of them flopped over in submission, but those on the front line hunched in stubborn silence.  The hogs quieted too, and the stone-folk went very still—almost braced, as if they could sense the impending flood.  Another hiss came from the ledge, and when Cob glared that way, both owl-folk puffed up into defensive balls of feathers.

“I know, Guardian,” said a low voice from within the indolent pile of bears.  As it extricated from the others, Cob saw its jaw shift to a more humanoid proportion.  None of the wolves looked at it, still fixated on Cob, but most tilted their ears in its direction and a few bared their teeth.

Straightening, the bear continued, “Haurah the wolf was the last Guardian to walk among us.  She took over a wolf-pack and tried to gather more: my clan, the hogs, the cats, much as you have done tonight.  But we would not follow her.  We thought the Guardian mad for taking a predator-vessel, and were content to hide from the Empire.  She took her pack north, toward the great swamp and the Imperial City.”

“And never returned.  I know,” said Cob.

“No, Guardian.  She did return.”

He blinked.  He had borne witness to Haurah's last moments in his flying dream: the baying of the hounds, the seething swamp, Enkhaelen carrying the necromantically animated head of her mate.  She had sent him away before he could see the final strike, but—

The other Guardians were still not looking at him.

“Go on,” he told the bear.

“She returned alone, desperate to raise a new army, but she was no longer the Guardian,” it said.  “The wolves rebuffed her, so she left.  It is said that she gathered Riddish wolf-kin to her cause and led them into the swamp, only to return again, alone, and beg for another expedition.  She was chased off and did not return.”

Cob sank into a crouch, feeling betrayed.  His glimpses into the Guardians' lives had been short, but he had trusted them to be truthful.  Now he had to wonder what had passed between Haurah and Enkhaelen and the decapitated wolf.

What are you keeping from me?  All of you.

No answer.

He turned his attention to the wolves and said, “Explain.”

“Haurah was my mother,” growled the wolf-woman Ressah.

Cob opened his mouth, shut it for a moment's thought, then said, “You were left with the cubs.  She mentioned that.”

Ressah nodded curtly.

“And you rejected her?”

“She smelled wrong.  I was small, but even I scented it.  She frightened us.”

“But she was from this pack?  She lived here, by the firebird's nest?”

“Yes, Guardian.”

“Did your folk ever go in there?”

“No, Guardian.  The nightmare has been there for many generations.”

Frustrated, Cob gripped his antlers as if he could uproot the answers from his brain.  If Enkhaelen and Haurah had not fought to the death, then what?  And why would she vanish the moment it was brought up?  Why had the Guardian left her?

Why were they keeping secrets from him?

Breathe.  Just breathe.  Understanding will come.

“Anyone else want to tell me something I should know but apparently don't?” he said, looking up.  When no one broke the silence, he rose slowly to his feet.  “Good.  I know we're not friends here, but I appreciate your presence—your willingness to come and speak, and to listen.  If there is one thing I want you to understand from this, it is that the firebird you knew is gone.  He will not help you, and he does not deserve your loyalty.

“As for me...  I'm not Haurah.  I know armies don't work against the Palace, and I won't ask you to fight the firebird, because most of you can't.  I just ask that you not tell him of this, if he comes back.  We are going to free the Ravager from him so that the Great Spirits can be balanced.  That should benefit everyone.