The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (98 page)

Instead Erevard turned his attention back to his sword.  Even as the ground subsided around him, it seemed he would have it only one way.

Further on, pilgrims fled wildly toward the gate.  Two figures awaited him in the space between: Fiora still holding her half-sword, and Arik, fully shifted, mouth coated in blood and left arm not cut but torn away at the shoulder as if chewed.

Another step, and Cob got his feet under himself.  The tectonic lever ached in his hand, its broken end still rotting; when he jabbed it at the clinging White Flame, the soldier finally got the message and dropped off.  Cob didn't look back, just ran toward his friends, toward the stampede.

Away from the cries, and the continued rumble and shudder of falling masonry.

*****

Though close enough to shank a White Flame, Dasira hesitated.  She was too aghast at the tendrils rising from the pit to make her dagger move, or even to mind the pilgrims that battered her with their bodies as they fled.  On the far side of the crumbling street, she saw Cob running the opposite way, toward the gate.  At his heels, another patch of ground subsided, pitching his closest pursuit into the mire.

The soldiers and mages paid her no more attention than she paid them.  They were all riveted to the spectacle—which she should have anticipated.  The shadowless circle could be nothing else but the Palace's reach, extending stealthily through the land beneath their feet.

To see it, though...

She hadn't been conditioned in years, but still she felt something like mind-shock.  Serindas burned in her hand, indifferent, but she couldn't peel her eyes from the tendrils.  So much like the ones that had brought her down...

Then, as suddenly as they had come, they retracted into the riven earth like worms fleeing the sun.  As their tips disappeared, she regained enough of her senses to sheathe the blade, and looked around to make sure no one had noted it.

The ataxic stillness of the gawkers broke a moment after hers.  One White Flame wrenched up his blank faceplate and began shouting at the others, while the Golds and Sapphires separated into clumps, a few retching from aftershock.  The building directly alongside the wrecked road had taken on a tilt, and as she watched, shaken occupants lurched from a side-door to fall to the shattered alley pavings.

In the pit, one of the fallen White Flames was climbing, a black sword hitched to his back by the threads of his armor.

She cursed under her breath.  That was undoubtedly Erevard, and with half a block of wreckage in her way.  Even if she hooked around through side-streets, there was no way she'd intercept him before he reached Cob.

Still, she had to try.

*****

The pilgrims streaming from the side-streets made it impossible for Cob to keep track of his friends.  He knew they were here—he'd seen Fiora toss away her broken sword and Arik shift to human right before the crowd engulfed them—but there was too much frenzy, too much herd-mind fear for him to feel them.

Likewise, it was impossible for the gate-guards to stop them.  The fortress came closer like a landmark along a river, and as the rapids of humanity pressed in on him, he was swept along into the dark tunnel, where the soldiers had plastered themselves against the walls to avoid being crushed.  He half-felt, half-saw people fall, struggle, and be trodden down, and the shrieks of confusion and pain echoed off the walls, multiplying the crowd's panic all the more.

He wanted to stop this.  Wanted to help.  But even when he felt cloth under his bare feet—and then flesh—the crowd pushed at him too insistently to pause.  He stumbled more than once and felt that pressure at his back, ready to roll right over him like an avalanche.  Frantic faces surrounded him.  He couldn't breathe.

But there was a light ahead.  The end of the tunnel.

Blindly he groped within himself for the herd-cadence.  Hundreds of miles of travel had turned it into a reflex, but it was more difficult to push it outward—first to the tight ring of his neighbors then expanding to theirs, and theirs, and theirs until he felt his many shoulders scraping the walls of the tunnel, his many hearts thundering with animal terror.

Slow
, he told them. 
Raise your heads; breathe; separate.  Aid the fallen.  Find the pace.

One by one, they fell in step with him.  It was a strain to keep them all in tow; some were healthy enough but this last-moment crowd held a high proportion of the old and brittle, the lame, the sick and the dying.  To keep the cadence, he had to strengthen them, and he didn't have much strength left.

But there were Arik and Fiora, separate but alive, and his arm itched less now.  He had no illusions about Erevard—the man would chase him to the Palace itself—but for the moment he'd fallen behind.  There were no blank spots among the crowd that could indicate a white-armored foe, so he allowed himself to concentrate on the cadence and let his other fears rest.

They'd lost the element of surprise, but that didn't mean the plan had failed.  There was still the swamp.  It wouldn't be as easy as the road, but it might be faster; he could run as much as he liked, and then blend in with the crowd once they were closer to Daecia City.

They just needed to get out of the tunnel.

Carefully, he began nudging the crowd.  It took a defter hand than he was used to—slowing or speeding certain pilgrims, prompting others to spread out or to compress—but soon he managed enough coordination to glide among the ranks, the crowd shifting around him to compensate.  He linked with his friends too, and as the tunnel exit grew nearer, he drifted them all toward the eastern wall.

Arik spotted him first, and his haggard face lit up with relief.  He opened his mouth to call out but Cob shushed him.  The whole pilgrim-herd was quiet now, just the
shuff
of slippers filling the tunnel; it wouldn't do to draw attention.

A hood bobbed up from the crowd, then went back down.  A moment later it was up again, Fiora's face flashing above those of her neighbors as she tried to see.

The sunlit exit approached.  He made a path for her and drew them both close, and was about to murmur when suddenly a burst of light filled his eyes.

He flinched instinctively and felt it ripple through the crowd. 
Attack!
cried his instinct, but he resisted; this wasn't an army and he wouldn't try to make it one.  He dropped the reins instead, not wanting to drag them into this.

Rather than an assault, the light resolved into a handful of floating wisps, which whisked by to illuminate the tunnel.  Ahead, their white-robed creator stood on thin air ten feet off the ground, squinting and directing them with a wave of her hand; two more mages backed her.

“He had a staff,” Cob heard one of them say.  “And there were two others, a tall one and a short one with a sword.”

Cob tried not to grimace.  He was already carrying the halved lever low, out of sight, and Arik and Fiora were a few paces ahead; if they took care, they would make the edge and slip free in just a few—

Something itched at the base of his skull: a mentalist's sweep.  He stared at the pilgrim ahead of him and tried to think blank thoughts, and after a moment, it went away.  Still, he held his breath as he passed the mages' floating station, then squinted hard against the sunlight that flooded down on the White Road.

It ran out from the gate in a straight line, wider than the tunnel but still covered in a loose web of pilgrims.  There were no pavings or ruts in its flat, seamless surface, and as he crossed onto it, the substance yielded slightly to his bare heels.  The air still held the taste of frost, but no snow touched it; in fact, it felt almost warm.

His stomach turned.  This was surely the same stuff as the tendrils that had come for him, but it gave no reaction as he started down its length.  The Guardian had tucked itself down deep again; perhaps without that energy, he was beneath the road's notice.

He angled slowly to the edge and looked over to see earthen berms running alongside it.  Beyond, the ground sank more than a yard to the snow-cloaked forest floor.  A glance back showed him the fortress growing distant, the mages concentrating on their task.  Archers watched from the wall above the tunnel though; for a good one, they were still within bowshot.

He took a deep breath, turned forward, and kept moving.

*****

Far up the White Road, Lark hugged false Maevor's waist, her face pressed to his back as the wind yanked at her braids.  They had been riding nearly nonstop since Finrarden, and she was ready to be quit of saddles, of roads, and of travel altogether.

Nearly.  If she got the chance, she would ride this horse right back the way they'd come, but she doubted she'd be so lucky.

Luck is for those who make it
, Cayer would say.  And when she looked, she could see a few options.  Maevor wore several daggers on his belt, clasped in their sheaths but still easy to reach, and she had Ripple.  Maybe bodythieves didn't need to breathe, but having an elemental crawl up your nose and down your throat was still a disorienting experience—she should know.

But she couldn't convince her hands to move.  For all her anger, she had no desire to stab this man—and even if she did, it wouldn't gain her freedom.  She was too deep in the swamp now.

With every hoofbeat, they passed another patch of pilgrims.  The landscape beyond had gone from wintry forest to tepid mire, the ground first separating into hills and tufts and root-networks and then subsiding to green water, with spidery white trees stretching out in all directions.  The raised road never changed and only rarely branched out; now it towered nearly five yards above the swamp, dividing it like a wall.

She hadn't been able to see far down the branchings.  Did people really live out here?  Daecia was supposed to be the center of Imperial civilization, but there were no caravan-shelters, no towns or villages, no citizens—just the endless ranks of pilgrims all trekking the same way.

Not even animals.  The climate was lukewarm but she heard no birdsong, no chatter of tree-dwellers, no insect-buzz.  Perhaps it was the road; the horse beneath her, a stolid Tasgard in Sapphire barding, had been peppy almost to the point of aggression when they'd swapped to it in Keceirnden, but turned anxious and snappish once they passed the gate.

She wished she could blame the road for her own lassitude, but she knew the truth.  Her obligations to Bah-
kai
and to Cob both tugged at her, but they were damaged beyond her skill to repair, while Maevor...

There was something about him.  About all the abominations and their broken-minded devotion to their faith.  It frightened her, but she pitied them too, and wondered what she was missing.

Despite herself, she wanted to see.

Chapter 26 – In Waves

Cob, Arik and Fiora got off the road as soon as was feasible, ignoring the gapes of their fellow pilgrims.  Already, the road patrols had increased; Cob thought the only reason they hadn't been caught was that all the pilgrims involved in the fight and stampede were equally rattled, equally scuffed and bloodied.

The land beyond spread out in a tangle of iced-over streams, tiny ponds and slumped hills.  He led them diagonally away until they could barely make out the road, then raised the Guardian's antlers and set a loping pace.  Arik's pain and Fiora's distress ate at him, but they needed distance, and without Dasira they were woefully uninformed of the dangers here.

By the time he slowed, the sun had begun its decline toward the west.  He mounted a final bracken-covered hillock, halted, and turned to regard his friends.

Red-cheeked and wide-eyed, Fiora looked up at him and said, “What now?”  She appeared unharmed, but kept clenching her sword-hand as if she regretted discarding the blade.

At her side, Arik peeled the scarf from his half-wolfish face, baring his teeth as the cloth stripped off fur and clotted blood.  More matted his jaw and coated his throat, with speckles down his front, and he'd tucked his torn sleeve inside his robe to hide the rest of the gore.  His right arm was down to a clean stump; as Cob watched, he shifted into full wolfman form and the truncated limb pushed outward, regrowing all the way to the elbow in a ripple of sinew and fur.

“You doin' all right?” Cob asked him.

He relaxed back into human form and scratched at his messy chin with his good hand.  “As well as can be expected.  But tired.  Mending is difficult even with the Wolf's aid.”

“It will all come back, right?” said Fiora.  “The way you bit it off—it was horrible.”

“Had to be done.  The rot was already creeping up.”

“The two of you shouldn't've got involved,” said Cob.  “Erevard's too dangerous.”

Fiora leveled a glare at him, fists on hips.  “He would've gotten you if not for us, and you're the one who matters!  Why can't you understand that?”

“We all matter.“

“Not in the same way.  You're the piking Guardian, Cob.  I don't care how you feel about me—you need to focus on the task.  Pikes, the way you keep pulling your punches, it's like you want to fail!”

“I don't—“

“You wouldn't kill the soldiers who chased us in the desert, you just defended against the ones that attacked us by Akarridi...  Pikes, even at the wraith forest you mostly tied them up with grass.”

“So what if I—“

“They're the enemy, Cob.  The whole Empire is the enemy!  Pilgrims, priests, soldiers, all of them.”  She scowled.  “If you had power enough to break the street, then you should've brought a building down on those bleach-white bastards, not sparred with them.  What's the point of these spirit powers if you won't use them right?”

Cob looked away, not wanting to argue.  The images recurred to him: white garbed shapes in the muddy mire, white threads reaching for him from beneath the cracked street.

Fiora pulled at his collar, trying to turn him to face her.  “I'm serious,” she said.  “People will die because of us, and you need to accept that.  You need to
participate
.  Because if you don't, we could die too.  Is that what you want?  Every enemy you leave alive is another that will come for us later—maybe when we're not ready.  Maybe when we're separate.  And how will you feel then, huh?  You and your pernicious guilt.”

“Stop it,” Cob muttered, prying her hands away.

“You stop it!  I almost think you prefer the Light!”

He tried to say
I don't
, but the words stuck in his throat.  His life before the faith had been lonely and often miserable, and while converting might have caused his mother's death, it had given him plenty in return.  A place, a purpose.  A friend in Darilan.  He'd seen, for the first time, a positive trajectory to his life.

The Guardian had destroyed that.  He couldn't blame it for getting trapped in him, but its presence had thrust him into this disastrous affair with the Dark, and he hated what he'd learned about the world, his family, himself.  Everywhere he went, he trailed ruin; even his sworn enemy seemed to pity him.  It was shameful how many times Enkhaelen had come to his rescue.

Now he'd dragged his friends here, involved the Trifolders and the Haarakash and the wraiths, disrupted many lives and gotten people killed.  Now he knew too much truth to turn back. 

“I don't like what I have t'do,” he said.  “I'm not gonna do any more of it than necessary.  If you can't accept that, then...”

“What, Cob?  Then what?”

“Jus'...stop talkin' to me, all right?”

One look at her flushed face told him that was the wrong answer.  “You can't ignore it, Cob!”  She raised her sword-hand.  “My—  Breana's power couldn't dent the white armor.  Arik's claws couldn't rend it.  We need you to fight for us like you mean it, not just wrap people up in shrubbery or drop them in the mud.  If you don't—“

“The lever couldn't get through his armor either!” Cob snapped, showing the truncated staff.  “There was nothin' I could do about him but trap the sword.  The Guardian isn't all-powerful.  It's a pikin' coward, actually, and those swords and that armor—I can't do anythin'.  Pikes, if the armor is the same stuff as what was under the street, and that's the same stuff as what's in the Palace, I don't think we can even reach Enkhaelen!”

She stared at him.  “There must be a way.”

“Well then what is it?  You all look at me for a plan, but what do I pikin' know?  The Guardian doesn't tell me shit.  Everyone suffers for my ignorance—Das, Lark, Rian, Ilshenrir—and not jus' us but our helpers and enemies too.  And that matters to me!  Erevard—he wasn't a friend but he wasn't a bad guy, you know?  And Fendil, Light, I can't even...  And Ammala, Paol Cray, Vriene and Sogan, the pikin' High Necromancer of Haaraka—they try to help me and they die or get maimed or I don't even know what.  Look at Arik right now.  I told you I should go on my own, and now it's too late.”

“Stop saying that!”

“Why, because you don't wanna believe it?  Doesn't mean it's not true.  If we really can't do this, then it's better for jus' me to be here, jus' me to suffer.  I—  I'd planned to be here from the start, Fiora, on the pilgrimage no matter what, because I want—“  He gestured roughly in frustration, unable to find the words.

Narrow-eyed, she said, “What?  Purification?  Absolution?  Death?  You piking idiot, this isn't the time for an emotional crisis.  The Light lied to you.  It's never been able to fulfill its promises.  All it does is brainwash its servants into believing it's right.”

“Don't call me an idiot.”

“Oh, I'm sorry, I'll ignore the fact that you just proclaimed your allegiance to our enemy!”

He gritted his teeth, trying to hold back the anger.  She was right; he'd been compromised by his old faith.  The Guardian was right; its memories had scrambled him, made him sympathize too much with his quarry and question their goal.  There was no denying that Enkhaelen had to die, that the Outsider needed to be expelled, or that the Empire would crash down in its wake.

But he couldn't shake the feeling that there was something wrong with this.  Their methods, their mission—all of it.

“I'm not changin' my tactics,” he muttered.  “No matter what you say.”

Fiora's face hardened, but then she exhaled her anger with obvious effort.  In its wake, all he could read in her expression was weariness.  “Fine.  Do what you will.  But we know the risks, Cob.  You're not the only one prepared to die.  So if you put yourself out there alone again—“

“I can't talk about this,” he snapped, and turned to start down the hill.

Hands latched onto his robe, trying to drag him to a stop.  He ignored them and kept going; Fiora wasn't nearly strong enough to keep him.  “Arik, help me here,” he heard her say.  “Cob, for pike's sake, we need to hash this out!”

“No we don't,” he said, confident the skinchanger wouldn't move against him.  If he had to walk all the way to the Palace with her hanging onto him like a tantruming toddler, then—

A third hand gripped him by the collar and yanked him back with enough force to separate his feet from the soil.  He tried to grapple at it but suddenly there were arms around him, pulling and pinning his own down, and a crush almost claustrophobic in its closeness.

Perhaps they had meant it as a hug, to provide comfort or just make him stay.  But in that instant, all the pressure boiled over.  Exhaustion, fear, confusion, guilt, fury, insult—he couldn't keep it down anymore, and they wouldn't
listen
.  They never
obeyed
.

A throttled sound rose from his throat as, in their clinch, he planted his feet and bucked.  The back of his head slammed into someone's face like whacking his skull against a rock, but the grip didn't break.  Stars burst behind his eyes then died into blackness; there was a grunt, then a gust of hot breath on his neck.

—
and he was in the quarry again, small, trapped
—

He kicked backward with a hoof and felt something crack.  The grip loosened and he twisted free, dropped.  There was a stone in his hand, as there had been once before, and so he turned, knowing that the only way out of this dead-end was through his victimizer, through the—

—
predator, the wolf
—

And there it was, outlined in the darkness: First Murderer, schism-maker, all gaping maw and fiery eyes and sickle-sharp claws.  The Great Enemy of the Stag.  As his antlers came out, the terrified rage flamed hotter, and he struck fast, hard, repeatedly with the object in his fist.  It was the only way to drive off the hunter, the only way to be safe. 

Something crunched beneath his knuckles, the impact reverberating through the blackened air in waves.  The Great Enemy recoiled, but that wasn't enough; it would be back.  They always came back.  He had to make it end.

He hit it again and felt the snap of bone, the spirit-tremor.

But then there was another body between them—one he couldn't hit.  He grabbed her instead and tried to pull her away from the Enemy, but she resisted and called something.  A single word over and over, its sound flat against his ears until finally the wolf-shape fled and the terror died away, grey daylight seeping back into his world.

“Cob!” she said, and he blinked heavily down at her shocked face, then at the skinchanger curled up on the ground.

Arik mewled faintly, his breath coming in tight sips.  Bright new blood flecked his lips.  The right side of his pilgrim robe was soaked with it, and as Cob watched, his form twisted between fur and skin but didn't mend, his eyes wild behind the defensive shield of his half-regrown, newly-broken arm.  Through the Guardian's senses, Cob saw the escaping vestiges of the Wolf's presence—and the dent in its pattern.

I...I attacked him
, Cob thought, a bubble of hysteria rising in his chest. 
And the Wolf came to him, and I injured it.  I injured a piking beast-spirit.

He tried to speak, but no sound came out.  His feet felt rooted to the earth, his hands clenching spasmodically—one empty, the other holding the blood-spattered lever.  Fiora backed away, huge eyes flicking from him to the skinchanger, but he barely registered it; all he saw was Arik.

And as the skinchanger shifted onto his good arm and began to belly-crawl closer, head bowed, tail tucked in abject surrender, Cob's control failed.  The fear overtook him, and he turned and ran.

*****

“Cob!” Fiora called after him.  “Cob!”  But he didn't slow, and in a matter of heartbeats his long strides took him from view.

Stunned, Fiora looked to Arik, who lay curled up once more, his good arm clamped against his side and his other hanging limp.  His eyes, always pale, had gone snow-white with shock, his bloody lips moving soundlessly.  As she crouched beside him, he roused just enough to meet her gaze, and in a tiny voice said, “Was I bad?”

“Oh goddess, no, not at all,” she replied, misting up.  The blood from the skinchanger's side didn't seem to be stopping; even with his continual slight shifts, the underlying damage refused to mend.

“Goddess,” she reiterated, then reached under her robe for the holdout knife strapped to her thigh.  It was all she had left of the gear she'd brought from Cantorin; even her prayer book was gone.  “We're gonna have to bandage you up,” she told him, and started cutting at his robe.

“Cold,” he said, pallid gaze fixed on her.

She grimaced.  With Cob's flight, the cold-tolerance he had provided was subsiding, and the chill nipped in at her ears and lips, her nose and fingers.  She wore layers under her own robe but Arik did not; he could freeze to death like this, especially with such blood-loss.

“Can you become a wolf?” she said.

The skinchanger whined low in his throat, but then screwed up his face in concentration.  By painful degrees, his physique changed: the fur pushed out through the skin, the hands crimped short and became clawed, the jaw flexed and deformed.  His legs finished first, then his good arm and face, leaving the bad arm to jerk and twist in its change as he groaned through a mouthful of bloodied fangs.