The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) (14 page)

Around him, all was chaos.

On the carter’s bench, Arik stood in wolfbeast form, slamming Handler Rickent repeatedly against the door-frame.  The man’s head lolled on his shoulders but he still clutched at the skinchanger’s arms weakly.  Around them, the other wagons were being thrust about by their thrashing hogs, some of them backed up to the river and some half-turned as if every hog in the caravan had tried to come to Cob’s aid.  They blocked the advance of the rearward soldiers, who struggled awkwardly through the wet snow, their swords drawn.  No mages were in view.  Men and women hollered and hauled at harnesses and lashed switches at sensitive hog-ears, only heightening the frenzy.

The Guardian put down roots, and Cob rose slowly, setting a hand to the side of the draft-hog that had saved him.  As he touched it, the emotions of all the other hogs surged in: pain, anger, fear, concern, a maelstrom contained in massive, dangerous bodies ready to attack anything he desired.  The one he touched tried to heave its great self up, and he thought calmness at it, unnerved by their ferocity.  Acknowledgment rippled through them, and in moments the whole caravan of struggling beasts relaxed, sagging stolidly in their traces.

Above, Arik perked his ears as if he had heard Cob’s thought, then dropped the semi-conscious handler and leapt to the road to crouch low, almost onto his belly, tail tucked tight.  Cob eyed him, still off-balance from everything that had just happened.  Even obsequious, the wolfbeast was terrifyingly large, with a thick silver mane and bristly fur studded with quills; his face was bestial, his hands savagely clawed, his jaws studded with two-inch fangs.  But though his eyes were those of a predator, they still showed chagrin, concern, relief.

“
I’m fine,” Cob told him.  “We have to get away.”

Arik glanced toward the river, then looked over his shoulder as a group of soldiers came around the end of a jackknifed wagon.  They had crossbows, and before Cob could react, the wolfbeast whipped around and darted toward them with an unnerving four-legged gait.  They fired on him as he closed the distance, but he reared up on his hind legs to crash among them with a roar, knocking several down as crossbow bolts flicked in all directions.  A moment later, he was up again, one hapless soldier in his grip as he started laying about with him like a truncheon.

Cob stared, open-mouthed, then looked for Fiora.

She was a few strides away, just past the slumped draft-hog where the end of the next wagon made a choke-point of the road.  With her sword and shield, she fended off two Gold soldiers there, but more were crowding up behind them with pikes, and past them Cob saw a mage at the forward portal weaving a new spell.  As he stepped toward her, three more mages caught sight of him and raised their hands to cast.

This is insane
, Cob thought. 
We have to go.

Yellow cloth flickered in his peripheral vision, and he scented a familiar wrongness in the air.  Then pain impaled him like a huge needle through the ribs.

For an instant, he was in another place: a tight white coffin riddled with spikes of ice and silver, piercing in from every angle but none more painful than the icicle through his chest, so cold that it burned.  He could not move, could not scream—like when the wraiths had shot him, only worse, because that arrow had not hated him.

This weapon was aware.  Spiteful, resentful of his heat.  Delighted to tear it away.

He struck out blindly and hit something solid, felt the weapon slide free.  Heat clenched in his side and chest, thawing him, and for a moment he tasted blood as the pain of awakened nerves made him gag.  Then the Guardian enwrapped him like a cloak of warm scales, and he managed to stumble a few steps away as the muscles and veins began to knit.

Slow footfalls followed him.  He looked up to see his opponent: a plain-looking man in a Gold uniform with a long black rapier in hand, its blade covered in pale runes and frozen blood.  There was something eye-avoidant about the man’s face, as if it resisted being remembered, but when he squinted hard, Cob saw the filaments under the skin.

His mouth went dry.  Another Darilan.

As if awaiting that acknowledgment, the abomination rushed him, leading with the rapier.  In his other hand he held a wicked-looking dagger, but it had none of the hateful aura of the black blade, so Cob barely noticed it; all his concentration was on avoiding the rapier, fleeing it, escaping the memory it brought.

—the red runes flaring in the dark—

His heels hit the dirt-thick edge of the snowbank.  He was trapped.

The abomination lunged for his throat.

Reflexes from fighting fist-to-knife kicked in.  Dropping sideways under the blade, Cob lashed his heel toward the abomination’s bent knee, and the man sprang back, striking down with his long dagger.  It scraped uselessly over Cob’s armor.  Taking advantage of the abomination’s brief retreat, Cob scuttled backward in the slush toward Fiora, his shoulder skimming the snowbank until it fetched up against something hard.

The abomination pursued.  Cob saw his gaze flick to Fiora’s back, saw the rapier rise, and reached for the thing that had stopped his shoulder—some sort of tingling metal rod.  Gripping it in both hands, he levered it from the earth and swung it up at the abomination.

White and gold sparks rained down as the rapier and the shaft of the beacon clashed.

The abomination leapt back in surprise.  Cob lurched to his feet and hefted his makeshift club.  It had a three-foot steel shaft etched with arcane runes, with a swirling glass sphere cupped in a clawed setting at the top.  Shivers of energy coursed through it, and as he raised it, the clouds within the sphere seemed to focus on him.  Watching.

“
Pike you all,” he snarled at it, and swung at the abomination.

The abomination dodged, then gamely caught the next swipe on his rapier’s quillons.  A new shower of sparks poured out as he tried to force the beacon up and away, but even with the Guardian concentrating on stitching his wound, Cob was stronger and kept their weapons clinched at chest-level.  Out of frustration, the abomination stabbed him several times with the dagger but it could not pierce his armor.

Changing tactics, the abomination shifted its grip to squeeze the rapier’s quillons hard against Cob’s knuckles.  Frigid pain lanced along his hand, and the wavering hallucination of the ice coffin threatened to close on him.  Gritting his teeth, Cob tried to grip further up the beacon-shaft with his offhand for leverage but the abomination battered his fingers with the dagger, and he actually felt it, as if being threatened by the rapier was enough to weaken the armor.  He recoiled.

Fiora’s back bumped his.  He heard her breathing hard.  Over the abomination’s shoulder, he saw the wolfbeast skittering away from lances of bright magic, leaving a mess of soldiers groaning in the snowbank, but there were more coming through the portal.  More soldiers, more mages, more everything.

In desperation, he snarled at the abomination and shoved forward, putting all his weight into it.  The dagger cut past his ear and drew a shallow line through his scalp but he overbore the startled man, his hooves firm in the slush as the abomination’s boots slid.  With a last push, he sent the abomination stumbling and flung the beacon hard at him, then grabbed Fiora by the shoulder and dragged.

She came with him at a run, and he heard a pike scrape on her shield as he hauled her between the draft-hog and the next wagon and onto the embankment beyond.

The draft-hog twisted as he passed.  Soldiers pursued in a thunder of armor, but then came a shriek, and he glanced back to see the hog’s massive jaws clamped around the first pursuer’s legs.  It bore the man to the ground and shook him like a rag doll, and as it heaved its great bulk about, its wagon pitching sideways toward the other soldiers.  Shouts filled the air.

Cob did not see Arik.  Cursing mentally, he shouted, “To the river!” then started down the slope himself.  Fiora shook off his grip to slide on her own.

Cob hit the half-frozen river and staggered out a few yards, trying to catch his breath, his injured side burning.  Fiora followed more slowly, wary of the ice.  The black current of the river thrummed through Cob’s hooves like a constant tremor, too close beneath him.  If the soldiers tried to follow, they were all doomed, but considering their mage back-up, he doubted his enemies were out of options.

Beyond the river were more snowy hills, rolling slowly westward into the faint fur of the Mist Forest.  Too far to run.

Hoi.  Help me
, he thought at the Guardian, but though he felt it at work in him, it did not respond.  The Gold magic, the evil blade—both had weakened it, and though he knew it had dragged him out of worse situations before, it had been in complete control then.  With him conscious, it had limited resources.

A grey shape skidded down the slope then scrambled along the ice: Arik in wolf-form, pelt streaked with red, paws skittering awkwardly as he tried to balance with the lumpy leather pack in his teeth.  Beyond him, the Golds emerged from behind the wagons, first five and then ten and then more than Cob could swiftly count.  Mages, pikemen, crossbowmen and the abomination, and on the wagons the civilians peeking from cart-benches and through lifted shutters.

Cob’s hands fisted.  He envisioned the river rising, ice cracking above the great tide of black water that would reach out to drag all the wagons down.  All the soldiers, all the treacherous carters, everyone who dared strike at him.  More than enough strength dwelt in the water, if only he knew how to harness it.

Then a tepid mist rolled over his shoulders to eclipse everything around him.

Cob stiffened, every nerve on edge.  A hand clutched his arm and he grabbed its owner and dragged it fighting into a headlock, where it scraped his face with a plated glove and kicked his shins and swore in a high voice until he realized that it was Fiora.  He also discovered that his own armor had failed, and her boots had hobnailed heels.  She told him in no uncertain terms that he deserved it.

Moments later, a large furry thing pressed itself against his aching legs, and he barely managed not to kick it.  He set a hand on the bristled neck instead and felt the wolf shudder.  Through the mist, he could barely see his companions, and the ground beneath them felt blank.  Not ice, not stone.  The river and the caravan were gone, leaving them alone in nothingness.

Except—

A light.  Tiny, pale in the gloom, it seemed to be approaching them, and Cob squinted but saw nothing beyond it.  Felt nothing, as if the Guardian’s senses had no worth here.  As it came closer, he tried not to imagine what it was, tried not to give in to the stories and his own memories of the mist.  He dared not let go of either of his companions now, not even to fight.

After endless moments, he glimpsed the shadow of a cord attached to the light.  Then a hand, an arm.  The suggestion of a body.

Another body.  A third.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

The last shape moved forward, resolving slightly.  Tall, dark.  Familiar.

“Hoi,” said Lark, then looked past him searchingly.  “I brought help.  Are you alone?”

Cob stared at her, utterly confused.  “No,” he managed after a moment.  “Two others.  Girl and a wolf.  They’re right with me.”

Lark squinted, then nodded.  “I see them.  All right.  Can we get them?”  She directed the question toward one of the other figures—cloaked and hooded, vague in the mist but holding the glowing object.  It nodded slowly.

“
Great,” said Lark, then fixed her gaze on Cob again.  Her smile looked like a razor.  “And where is Rian?”

Cold sweat sprang up on his skin.  He had not thought of the goblin since his escape into the forest, and he suddenly realized he had no idea what had happened after he was dragged away.  “He’s…  He’s not here.  He’s all right though.  Can we talk about it later?”

Her dark eyes narrowed, and he knew she saw right through him.  But she stuck out her hand nevertheless.  “Grab me.  We all need to keep in contact or Ilshenrir might lose us.”

Cob nudged Fiora forward, trying not to feel like he was hiding behind her.  “Uh, Fiora, meet Lark,” he said.  The Trifolder girl gave him an odd look, but Lark smiled tightly and nodded in greeting, so Fiora clasped her hand.  Cob kept his grip on Fiora’s other arm and knotted his fingers in Arik’s ruff, the wolf pressed so tight to his leg that he could have been glued there.

“All right then,” said Lark.  “Let’s go somewhere we can talk.”

With that, they moved forward into the mist.

Twice before, Cob had been swallowed by the mist.  Both times were by surprise: first the attack on the loggers that had put him in the infirmary and given him his silver scar, and second the visitation he had received while stumbling delirious through the woods, trying to escape his Imperial pursuit.

Now, with the mist all around him, he prayed that this was more like the second encounter.  The ambush at the logging line had been many wraiths—at least a dozen.  This, like the time by the stream, was just one or maybe two, if that third person was also a wraith.

He burned to know what it meant, but he could neither hear the others nor see them, only feel them: Fiora’s arm in his grip, Arik’s big hairy hand locked over his.  The other three were invisible.  For all he knew, they were gone.

Even the Guardian had all but vanished.  Cob’s wounds were down to dull aches now, a testament to its diligent mending, but he sensed it like a baby snake curled in the pit of his stomach instead of the great serpent it normally was.  It felt tired, and so did he.

Something tall and narrow moved through the mist beside him.

He shied away, heart thundering, sweat springing up on his skin, but it was already gone.  The skinchanger’s hand gripped tighter and he glanced back as Arik leaned in, close enough to part the veil of mist; his eyes were still feral blue, his hair a brindled mass, but his face was mostly human and his frown concerned.  Blood freckled his hairy shoulders.

“Something wrong?” he said in a low voice.

Cob nodded toward where the shape had moved.  “Somethin’ out there.”

Squinting, the skinchanger sniffed at the mist, then shook his head with a look of unease.  “Nothing,” he said.  “There is nothing.  I barely scent you.”

Cob cursed under his breath.  His grip on Fiora kept pulling him along, but suddenly trusting Lark and her mysterious companions seemed like a bad idea. 
Was that really Lark?
he wondered. 
Is this just a wraith trick?  But then, she knew about Rian…

I’m in so much trouble.

The more he searched the mist, the more it shifted.  Where once it had been utter blankness, he started catching the outlines of structures—corners, thin buttresses, gate-bars, empty doorways, all swimming in the endless grey.  Further away than the invisible people he clung to, yet beckoning.

And beyond them, faint swirls of motion, as if others had recently passed.

In the breathless silence, he found himself straining to catch any sound.  His own footfalls could not reach him, but something tickled at the edge of his hearing.  Distant, unfathomably distant, and soft like the whisper of wind through leaves.  Sing-song…

A face loomed up beside him and he flinched back, swallowing a scream.  Through the thin screen of mist, Fiora squinted at him, then said, “You all right?”

“Fine.”

“
Lark says Ilshenrir says stop encouraging them.”

“
What?  Who?”

“
Ilshenrir.  The leader.  I think he’s a wraith.”

“
No, I mean—‘them’?”

“
She didn’t say.  But we’re nearly there.”

“
Where?”

“
Somewhere safe.”

“
Well, that’s a pikin’ relief.”

Fiora snorted, then turned forward again.

Annoyed and uneasy, Cob squeezed his eyes shut and tried to pretend that he was marching down a normal road, under a normal sun, with normal people.  He had no idea how the others could stay so calm in here.

If some Light-cursed thing lurches out of the Light-cursed mist and eats us all, it’s their fault for not taking this seriously.

But nothing touched him, and when the neutral ground roughened to grass and dirt beneath him, he opened his eyes to see the mist thinning into a clearing.  Ahead, Fiora held Lark’s hand, who held the hand of a short blonde woman, who held the hand of a tall, thin individual in a mottled green cloak.  Cob looked back, and naked Arik smiled broadly at him, a pack-strap slung across one shoulder—Fiora’s.

Then the skinchanger glanced past Cob, and the smile withered from his face.

“Can we let go now?” said Fiora.

“
It is safe,” said the green-cloaked individual softly as the last wisps of mist retracted into the trees.  “We have exited the Grey.”

Hands fell.  Cob looked around for what had troubled Arik, frowning.

Winter had not yet touched this place.  No snow lay underfoot, only yellow grass and moss and small ground-clinging shrubs, and the trees that encircled the clearing arched inward to spread their branches like a red-amber roof.  At the very center stood a pair of trees intertwined around a cerulean-blue crystal pillar; the trees themselves were heavy with autumn leaves and fruit.  Tiny birds of all colors—red needlewings, green ribbonchasers, blue revanons and others Cob did not know—peeped and fluttered among the leaves and over the roots.

His skin tingled.  Inside, the Guardian swelled until it felt on the verge of manifesting, its essence wary, threatened though there was nothing about the clearing that spoke of danger.  The three women looked untroubled—awed, even—but at his back he felt Arik’s tension as keenly as his own.

“What is this place?” he said, eyeing the green-cloaked man.

“
A waystation, Guardian.”  The man inclined his hooded head.  “I apologize.  I should not have brought you here, but I had no choice.”

“
No choice?”  Cob stepped into the clearing, and it felt like crossing a threshold; the tingle became a warmth, not strong but peculiar, as if he had leaned toward an unnatural fire.  When it did not increase, he warily approached the man.  The women parted from his path, Lark with brows furrowed, Fiora crossing her arms dubiously.  “What d’you mean?”

The man smiled slightly beneath the shadow of his hood, then bowed his head again.  “You were endangered, Guardian.  It was my duty to rescue you from your aggressors.  However, my ability to breach the Grey is limited, so it was necessary to bring you to the closest waystation.  We are approximately a hundred miles south and east of your previous position, perhaps a day’s walk from the border of the Mist Forest.”

Cob stared around at the forest that ringed them.  Autumn-reddened trees stretched in every direction.  “We’re
where
?”

“
At the outer defenses of Syllastria, Guardian.  Again, I apologize.”

For a long moment, Cob just looked at the man, who stood with hands folded together in perfect calm.  Then Lark sidled between them cautiously.  “Maybe I should introduce you two.  Cob, this is Ilshenrir.  He came to me, trying to find you.  He’s here to help.”

Cob gave Lark a wary look.  She had some sort of face-paint on: streaks of red across her eyelids and arcs of black down her cheeks, adding a feralness to her dark features.  In her layers of garments and unkempt braids, she seemed far removed from the woman he had met in the Shadow Folk tavern, but the way her eyes hardened as she returned his stare was the same.

“
How did y’ find me?” Cob said.

“
We—“

“
With this, Guardian.  It belongs to you, by blood and pain.”  The man stepped past Lark and held out his hand.  Beneath the green cloak, Cob glimpsed some sort of dull scale armor or layered grey leather contoured precisely to the narrow build beneath.  In the palm of the man's grey glove sat a silvery crystalline arrowhead on a thong.  “I return it to you.  You must keep it safe.”

Cob took it without enthusiasm.  He had been shot with it, then had worn it for a long time after as a token of survival, but knowing that the Guardian had saved him rather than any strength on his part gave it markedly less meaning.

“Take your hood off,” he told the man.

Ilshenrir did not hesitate, brushing the hood back to reveal a fine-boned face with pale, slanted eyes and fair hair bound in a loose tail—not what Cob had expected.  Behind him, he felt as much as heard Arik’s rumbling growl.

“You’re a wraith,” Cob said, not completely sure.

The man smiled wryly and inclined his head once more.  “Yes, Guardian.  I had not intended to approach you in such an obviously airahene way, but I suppose a lack of subterfuge can be a blessing.”

“Airahene.”

“
The grey wraiths, as you call us.  We of the Forest of Mists.”

“
And how d’you think you can help me?  Beside pullin’ me a hundred miles off-track.”

“
Again, I apologize.”

“
Oh come on, Cob,” Fiora interjected from the sidelines, “you know we had no way off the river.  We were caught.  No matter where we’ve ended up, he saved our lives.”

Cob glowered at her, not wanting to hear that.  She lifted her chin pugnaciously and added, “We’re here now, so let’s just figure out what to do.”

“Fine.”  Cob looked back to Arik, whose hackles were still up—visibly, his hair puffed from his scalp in a way that would be comical if not for the snarl he wore.  He met Cob’s eyes briefly, then dropped his gaze and closed his lips over his teeth, but fear and anger still showed in the tremor of his muscular shoulders.  When Cob set a hand on his arm, a rush of mad energy jumped through the connection, and the skinchanger swayed and sat down hard in the moss.

“
Pikes, you all right?” Cob said, alarmed.  He started to pull away but Arik grabbed his hand and held it in place, head still down, panting.

“
What’s wrong with that man, and why is he naked?” said Lark.

Cob crouched beside the skinchanger, ignoring Lark’s questions.  Though they had known each other for barely two weeks, he had already come to rely on Arik’s bluff good cheer.  Now the skinchanger was wet with sweat as well as blood—others’ blood, it seemed, for he had no visible wounds—and would not look up.

“Hoi,” said Cob softly, well aware of their spectators.  “What happened?”

Arik shook his head, quills rattling in his thick hair, and just clutched harder over Cob’s hand.  Grimacing, Cob reached back to pull at the cords of his rucksack, which had stayed reliably in place despite the turmoil of the fight.  Arik’s chiton was at the top, and he shook it out one-handed and draped it across the skinchanger’s lap, then glanced to the others.

Fiora stood closest, almost like a guard, her arms crossed and concern etched on her round face.  Behind her, Lark and the blonde woman exchanged significant looks.  Ilshenrir had retreated a few steps toward the trees but seemed placid, hands folded, though his gaze never strayed from the skinchanger.

“
I believe he is having an adverse reaction to my company,” the wraith said calmly.  “His kind and mine have not been good neighbors.”

“
If by ‘adverse reaction’ you mean he wants to rip you apart,” said the blonde woman.

Cob nodded.  With his hand on Arik, he could feel emotions moving through the skinchanger in waves—pain, fury, over and over, tolerable only because they were escaping through his touch.  They seemed to come from beyond him somehow; beneath their thunder he felt the rest of Arik cringing from his lack of control.

“Put your hood back up,” he told the wraith.  Ilshenrir complied.

It took a few long, tense moments, but the waves slowly ebbed, leaving Cob feeling nauseated and rather angry himself.  Finally the skinchanger released his hand and exhaled a huff, then said raggedly, “It was Raun.  Raun saw him through my eyes.”

“The wolf-spirit, the First Hunter?” said Cob.  “He’s here?”

“
He does not need to be here,” said Ilshenrir.  “Skinchangers do not have souls; they are connected directly to their parent spirit.  This is what makes them so difficult to kill.  So long as the spirit is well, they will recover from all but the worst trauma.  But if the spirit is harmed…”

“
We are all harmed,” Arik murmured.  “We feel what he feels.  His joys, his rages.”

Cob shot another look at Ilshenrir.  He knew a bit about wraiths.  They were Outsiders, invaders from beyond the sky, and they had massacred the skinchangers when they first arrived.  They had even killed a few spirits before the Guardian and Ravager had allied to stop them.

As if reading his thoughts, the wraith said, “I am not your enemy, Guardian.  The airahene wish to make amends for what we have done to your kind.  That is why I was sent—“

“
Just kill yourselves, then,” Arik growled.  “Make it easy on everyone.”

“
I fear that is not possible.  We do not die.”

“
Yes y’do.  The army’s killed wraiths before,” said Cob.

Ilshenrir shook his head.  “You broke their physical shells, yes, but my people are not physical.  When we lose our shells, our essences flee to our ships to take on new ones, or else wander the Grey until we find the path home."

"The Grey—the mist?"

"Yes.  It is the empty place where this world's spiritual and physical realms once met.  The spirits tore their realm away from the physical one during our war, to escape our grasp, but it left a gap in between; now anything that falls through is trapped there, particularly my kind when we lose our physical anchor.  If we are not close enough to our spires or ships, we are drawn in.