The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (92 page)

“I'm not here to educate you.”

“Do you know what your people have done?”  The words swelled in her chest, too sudden and raw to be stopped, and she spat them out: “They destroyed Bah-
kai
.  They just crushed it—the whole block.  Crimsons and mages and some white-armored types.  More Kheri rioted and got beat down, no idea how many are dead.  And what, because we sheltered Cob?”

Maevor looked up, aghast.  She could almost see the memories queuing in his eyes.

“You know how we feel,” she said curtly.  “You remember being Maevor.  How could you want to become someone else so badly that you'd—“

The wrought-iron gate squeaked.  She and Maevor both looked that way.

A woman in a bilious green robe stormed through, hair a-frazzle, scarf streaming behind her.  Two men followed in her wake, also robed, one soot-streaked and the other half-armored in steel scales with no visible underpinnings.  All were Riddish, and cast Lark only brief looks.  They didn't seem to notice Maevor.

The female mage hammered her fist on the door, waited, then kicked it several times.  No response came, and the half-armored man grabbed her wrist before she could start pounding again.  They conversed quietly, and she crossed her arms, lip trembling.

Lark traded a glance with Maevor, who grimaced and curled his fingers into a weird shape.  It took her a moment to recognize it as a Shadow sign, truncated by his missing fingers:
Yours.
  She bugged her eyes at him, not sure what to think, and he jerked his chin at the mages.

Morgwi's balls
, she thought, then stubbed out her cheroot and made sure her sleeves still covered her shackles before calling out, “We've been trying for a while.”

The soot-stained man glanced to them and grimaced, indicating the tower.  “Is this normal?  It's been years for me...”

“I just got here,” said Lark.

“What, just now?”

“Well...”  Her mind raced through answers.  Where was she expected to be, as a Silent Circle mage?  Was it wrong to live in a city instead of the Citadel, or to travel by cart instead of portal?  And why did they look so roughed-up?  “No, I was on an expedition in the desert.  I've been lodging here, got back last night...”

“So you haven't heard?”

“Heard what?”

“The Citadel,” interjected the woman in a watery voice.  “The Citadel erupted.”

Though it meant little to her, Lark didn't have to fake shock.  “Erupted?  How?”

“We don't know,” said the soot-stained man, running a hand across his face and only mussing himself further.  “It started yesterday.  Just a weird feeling at first, but then people leaving—telling us to leave.  People with all their stuff packed, portals everywhere, and then suddenly there was fighting in the sky and smoke from the ground and—“

“The mentalists sent us away,” said the armored man.  “You didn't hear anything?”

Lark shook her head.  “I haven't been in touch.”

The female mage abruptly wheeled and kicked the door again, then started tracing symbols on it.  Lines of greenish light burned into the heavy wood in their wake.

“Are you crazy?” said the armored man, moving in.  “You'll set off the—“

“Wards?  If the wards were up, I wouldn't be able to do this.”

The armored man halted and looked up the length of the tower.  Lark did as well, and realized that though she could see the blue dome that enclosed the tower and rock-garden, there was no magical light on the tower itself.

A last symbol, then the woman gave the door another kick.  A sound came like a latch popping, and it swung outward to reveal a stone wall with an inset silver arch, also lightless.

“The portal's down,” said the soot-stained man, bemused.

Lark rose from the bench, then looked to Maevor.  From his uneasy expression, he didn't often work with mages.  He caught her glance and nodded her toward the group, and she drifted over to join them.

“What do you think this means?” she prompted.

The woman was already tapping on the archway, shimmers of green energy transferring from her fingers to the runes.  The armored man cast Lark a look, then started on the other side of the arch, saying, “Something's wrong.”

“Everything's wrong,” groaned the soot-stained man.

Glad for the sleeves and bracelets covering her shackles, Lark tugged at the sooty man's arm.  “Maybe you should sit.  You look unwell.”

“I—  I was in the alchemy lab, everything was catching fire, I just wanted to get my notes but then the floor buckled and—“

“Got it,” said the woman.  Everyone looked over as the silver frame activated, a pane of iridescence replacing the stone wall.

As it clarified into a doorway, smoke poured out in a noxious wave.

The woman gave a little shriek, and then everyone was running: the Circle mages in pure panic, Lark and Maevor on their heels.  The billowing cloud was faster, engulfing them in a hot stinking haze, but the yard was small; it took only a few long strides to reach the wall, a few more moments to feel along it and find the gate.  They burst out into the street together, coughing and cursing, the smoke oozing from the gate in their wake.

Maevor kicked it shut, and the black plumes that had escaped with them dissipated.  Looking back, Lark saw the blue dome fill to the brim with roiling darkness, the Watchtower completely obscured.  As the smoke reached the upper limits, a thin greasy film of it lifted from the top of the dome and was taken by the wind.

“I am going back to my clan,” the woman rasped, and took off down the street.

The two male mages stared after her, then at each other, then at Lark.  “They haven't answered all morning?” said the armored one weakly.

Lark shook her head.  “I got here maybe half a mark before you.  But there was some—“  She stopped herself from saying
smoke, like from a stove
, it suddenly occurring to her that mages didn't need such mundane things.  “It felt strange,” she amended.  “I just didn't want to interrupt.”

Nodding dazedly, the armored man said, “Well—  I don't know what to do.  What do we do?”

Lark gestured toward the fortress.  “Report to the governor?”

His eyes sharpened and he sneered, looking suddenly very much like his fellow Riddish townsfolk.  “The governor can—  No, she had the right idea.  We're off to our clan.  Good luck to you.  Come, cousin.”

“And to you,” Lark echoed as the armored man corralled the sooty one and hauled him down the street.  She looked again to the Watchtower in its veil of smoke, and shuddered; the trace of rashi in her throat was gone, overpowered by that awful reek.

Then she turned to Maevor, who lingered just a pace away, watching her.  “Now what?” she said.

“Now...”  He gestured a mangled hand at the tower.  “Apparently something bad has happened.  So we report in personally.  At the Palace.”

*****

Even as he stepped through the portal, Enkhaelen was casting.  It was difficult to hold a spell together while crossing a dimension-warping field, but he had experience.  So when a trio of arcane missiles flew at his face the instant his foot touched the Palace floor, his ward absorbed them harmlessly.

He took a moment to regard his attackers.  All three wore Gold robes, bloodied and soot-stained, which meant his attack on the Hawk's Pride had at least partially succeeded.

He smiled.

One of the attackers turned to run, so he shot her in the back with a ward-breaking bolt.  It was a reflex by now, the parameters so deeply engraved upon his nerves that he often couldn't stop it.  He had killed more than a few runners he'd meant to preserve—not that he'd admit it.

The other two struck back, one hitting his ward with a splitter and the other going brute-force, gold-tinged energy leaping from his hands in a form like a harpoon.  Enkhaelen swatted the splitter aside and let the harpoon hit his absorption ward, where it was sucked into his reservoir—a droplet in a roiling sea.

Like any arcane assault, the harpoon left a fading thread in the air between them.  Enkhaelen hooked it in his fingers and sent a much greater surge along its length.

It hit the Gold mage in the casting-hand and backwashed up his open channels.  The energy he had been gathering for a new assault contacted the energy Enkhaelen was forcing upon him, and his jaw dropped, a teakettle-whistle of a scream emerging from his locked throat.  Every muscle seized, every channel snapped wide, and the protective sigils on his robe flared and incinerated as he dumped his reservoir to escape catastrophic burnout.

Enkhaelen split the other one's wards and bolted him to death, then strolled over to inspect his overload-victim.  The man had collapsed, twitching; behind and beneath him, the white substance of the Palace glowed with a strong nacreous light.  In any other place, such a self-preserving action would have killed everyone else in the vicinity, but the Palace had a thirst even deeper than Enkhaelen's.

“Are you alive?” Enkhaelen said, prodding the fallen man with his boot.  He was red-faced as if from exposure—a good sign.  Burnout started internally and evaporated saliva, digestive acid and blood before it made any mark on the skin; sunburn meant he had projected his energies outward quickly enough to spare his organs.

Enkhaelen nudged the man's face, then toed his nose a few times and watched how his eyes rolled.  It was amusing, sometimes, to have such power and not kill.

'Must you be so childish?'
said Kuthra.

Smile souring, Enkhaelen took a moment to mash his heel against the man's cheek in defiance, then stalked into the hallway.  “I didn't ask for your opinion,” he muttered.

'We are at a turning point.  If you refuse to be serious...'

“I'm always serious.”

'You are a bad liar.'

“Were the Hawk's Pride and the Citadel not serious enough for you?”

'They were self-indulgent tantrums which compromised our purpose.'

Enkhaelen grunted.  He could do without this conversation.  He had learned long ago that the eavesdropping mentalists could not hear Kuthra, but they could still pick up his responses—and the wraith was right.  This wasn't a good time.

So he quick-walked down the winding white corridor, not bothering to navigate.  Inevitably he found himself at the great doors, which opened at his approach.

Raised voices cut off the moment he entered the throne room.  A quick glance showed him the other doors were closed, the vast space empty but for clusters of color and activity by the dais.  He could barely imagine how packed it must be in the antechambers; this close to the Midwinter Festival, there would be tens of thousands of pilgrims within Daecia City, all awaiting their chance to bask in the glory of the Risen Phoenix.  If not for the Emperor's complete control of the Palace, the most fanatical would probably have snuck in already.

As he neared the dais, he took in the tableau: Gold General Lynned and six Gold mages being restrained by White Flame soldiers; Sapphire General Demathry in his armor for once, standing with arms crossed a few paces from the Golds and backed by a score of his own soldiers; Field Marshal Rackmar halfway up the dais, speaking to Lord Chancellor Caernahon on his higher step.  The Emperor and Empress were on their thrones, and Crown Prince Kelturin stood among the White Flames that lined the walls, his helm off and his face clenched.

Choosing to gamble, Enkhaelen canceled his remaining wards.  It was wiser to take a few lumps right now than to start a real fight.

“No one from Valent?” he said as he strolled up.  “I'd hoped for a warmer welcome.  I feel unloved.”

“You piking lunatic!” shouted Gold General Lynned, three White Flames not quite sufficient to keep him from taking a step forward.  The golden teardrop above his gorget was twitching on its chain, its enchantments stressed by his rage.  “You blew up half my city!”

“I was nowhere near the place.  Oh, you might want to clean up the portal room.”

“The Hawk's Pride has fallen!  Half the plaza has collapsed into the arena!  Every single one of my Watchtowers is damaged—some completely leveled!”

“Mine as well,” said Sapphire General Demathry, his voice like a chilled blade against Lynned's hot rage.  “Every Watchtower connected to the Gold Weave has been disabled.”

Enkhaelen smirked.  “Well, that's what happens when a major Weave knot explodes.  Cascade failures can be quite spectacular.”

“You rigged this!” Lynned shrieked.  “You attacked my army, my homeland—“

“Technically it attacked itself.”

“Don't try to deny this, you little shit!”

“I didn't build the Gold Weave.  I didn't build any of the Weaves—you all know that I'm mind-blind.  I have no access to them except by proxy, and I certainly don't know enough about them to 'rig' anything.”

“You exploited it then!  You knew it was explosive, and you—“

“Anything is explosive if you apply enough energy.”

“
I will kill you.
”

“Our glorious Emperor might not approve.”

Seething, General Lynned nevertheless eased back so that the White Flames no longer needed to grapple him, and glanced to the dais.  Enkhaelen did not.  He knew he would have to deal with the Emperor's attention soon, and did not wish to be sidetracked too early.