The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) (5 page)

The Mother Matriarch’s brows furrowed, and she shook her head.  “I do not know of this Morshoc, but there should be no magic strong enough to bind a Great Spirit.  The wraiths tried long ago, but though they snared and destroyed many lesser spirits, they could not hold the Guardian or Ravager.  If the Empire has discovered such a power…”

“Morshoc said he could undo the bonds.  But we had a falling-out,” Cob said, remembering all too clearly the corpses spread before the Riftwatch towers.  Ammala’s son Paol had died there, and thinking about it brought the poisonous anger up to choke him.  He looked away, trying to stay in control.

“
He’s a necromancer,” he said finally.  “Maybe it’s that.  The Guardian says I’ve got splinters in me—pieces of other people’s souls—and that’s what necromancers do, right?  Pike around with bodies and souls?”

“
Yes,” said the Mother Matriarch, still frowning.  “The ways of necromancers are not unknown to us.  They twist their victims to their will, but they have never had power over spirits, only human souls.  And outside of the Haarakash and wraithkind, their practices have been eradicated from the north.  Certainly we would have heard if there were necromancers being trained for Imperial service.”

Cob shrugged.  “That’s what I know.  Can you help?”

“I…”  The Mother Matriarch looked thoughtful, then nodded slowly.  “Yes, perhaps, if what you wish is to have your bonds broken.  We are not sorcerers, but a ritual cleansing may help weaken the magic sufficiently for the Guardian to break free.”

“
Good.”

“
And what will you do once you are no longer the Guardian?”

Cob opened his mouth to say
Kill Morshoc
, then thought better of it.  Agreeable as these women seemed, he did not trust them, especially now that he knew one of their goddesses was Brancir.  Morshoc had snapped at him once to stay away from the metal-folk—that they were his folk, not Cob’s—and that possessiveness made Cob wonder how neutral the Trifolders would be in a conflict between Guardian and Ravager.  To admit that he meant to kill the Ravager vessel might turn them against him.

After all, Jasper had been friendly with Morshoc too.

“Dunno,” he said instead.  “Guess I’ll have to see.  Though we could use some travel papers.”

The Mother Matriarch regarded him blindly, and he fidgeted; it was as if her blank eyes saw past his skin into the roil of his soul.  “Yes, of course,” she said finally, and beckoned to Sister Talla, who leaned down to offer her arm.  “I will prepare the cleansing ritual,” she said as she rose with the stern woman’s help, “and in the meanwhile we will have supplies and papers gathered for you.  We should also see the two of you fed.  We are nothing without our hospitality.”

“Find Sister Sentinel Merrow,” Sister Talla called to the crowd, which dispersed into purposeful action.

Cob rose slowly, straightening his clothes, and watched as Sister Talla led the Mother Matriarch to the altar.  A hand touched his arm and he turned to find a young woman in a brown dress smiling up at him, her hair bound in elaborate braids.  “Please accompany me to the dining hall, great sir,” she said.  Behind her, Arik rose from his crouch and waggled his bushy brows.

Cob managed not to glare at the skinchanger.  “Yeah, all right,” he mumbled, and fell into step after the woman, all too aware of the sway of her hips beneath the bland dress.  Suddenly it did not seem wise to have come here.

In the backwash of the impromptu gathering, the dining hall was full.  Women and girls clustered on the couches that lined the walls, apparently self-segregated by attire: the brown-dressed women together, the girls in men’s clothes whispering to each other behind their hands.  A few older men lingered in a hallway, trading muttered comments.  They wore grey, and their eyes followed Cob and Arik as the young priestess led them to a table.

All eyes did.

Cob wanted to crawl under a bench.  He had never liked attention, and knew that if he had not been carrying the Guardian, he would not be getting it now.  Arik, on the other hand, beamed at all the observers and hooked an arm across Cob’s shoulders.  Cob elbowed him in the ribs.

“Oh no,” said Arik, “I am being poked by a twig.”

“
I’ll be right back with something for you,” said the young priestess, visibly amused.  Annoyed, Cob squirmed free of Arik’s arm and sat on a bench seat.  The skinchanger plunked down next to him.

“
I’m not a twig,” Cob muttered.  “Try t’be serious.”

Arik pinched his elbow through the layers of coat and shirt, and Cob jabbed him again in retribution.  The skinchanger arm-blocked and for a moment they struggled for dominance over the bench before Arik flopped back with a mournful sound of defeat.

Smothered giggles ran through the crowd.  Cob’s face burned, and he slumped against the table to cover his head with his arms. 
Stinkin’ distracting wolves
, he thought.  A big hand ruffled his hair and he growled, trying to squelch the embarrassment.

“
Do not worry,” Arik said in a low voice, “the females are still attracted to you even if you are twiggy and strange.  I can smell it.”

Cob banged his forehead on the tabletop.

He had never been around many women.  Nine years of slaving in the quarry then serving in the Crimson Army had isolated him from them to the point that they had become mythological.  Since going rogue, he had met Ammala Cray and Lark and Lady Annia, but they too had been unfathomable and unreal.  Now he was surrounded by them.

And they were laughing at him.

“Several of them are fertile,” Arik continued conspiratorially.  “I will point them out.  This is the proper season for making babies.”

“
Stop tryin’ to be helpful,” Cob hissed.

A bowl slid in front of him.  He sat up guiltily, hoping no one had heard, and blinked.  The server was not the priestess but one of those young women in men’s garb.  His gaze traveled up the lacings of her red shirt to her face.

She smiled.  It was part polite, part measuring, as if she was deciding whether she should punch him for staring.  And she looked like the type who would; her curly hair was bound back professionally tight, her sleeves rolled up to show the sinewy arms of a fighter, her whole stance and body firm.  Her eyes were dark stones in a focused face, not quite pretty—too wide, too stubborn-jawed.

Then she dimpled at him and set down another bowl, benign as any of the others.

“Go ahead,” she said, nodding to the plates as she continued to place them.  Cob looked down and took a deep breath, inhaling the aromas of hot food for the first time in weeks.

Compared to stringy winter hare, it was a banquet.  Steam coiled up from bowls of mashed root vegetables with butter, cheese-and-onion pie, and briney salt pork with barley and snowbeans and greens.  There was herb-bread and two mugs of something cidery, also steaming, and Arik stared fixedly at Cob until he took the first bite of the salt pork.  Then the skinchanger started loading his plate like it was a competition.

For a while they ate like starving dogs, ignoring the world beyond their plates.  After a few slivers of pork, Cob decided he did not like it—disappointing for having dreamt of bacon while in the Army—and let Arik exile the greens to his plate in exchange.  They split the bread, but when Arik tried to sneak the pie away, Cob yanked it back.  He was willing to share, but Arik kept inching it toward himself every time Cob looked elsewhere, so Cob kept reclaiming it until finally he realized that Arik was not eating it, just stealing it.  He was playing again.

That had frustrated him to no end when they were in the forest together.  The wolf pouncing him and streaking away, nabbing his hat and hiding it, dancing around in the snow with tail swishing wildly…  Over and over again, pestering until finally Cob snapped and chased him or threw snowballs after him or wrestled the blasted creature into a snowbank.

He refused to think of it as fun, but when he brandished his fork at Arik threateningly and Arik grinned, he could not help echoing it.  Arik’s fork came up in self-defense, and for a few moments there was nothing but clashing tines, feints and knuckle-stabbings.

Then the girl across the table snorted, and Cob looked to her, embarrassed to realize that she had been watching.

She had a mug in her hand, and had settled on the opposite seat to observe them wryly.  A few girls lingered behind her—dress-wearers and breeches-wearers both, all around her age, which Cob guessed was also around his—but she was the only one who had deigned to sit.

“
Um,” said Cob, still fending off Arik’s fork.  “Good hospitality for bein’ in a crypt.”

“
It’s not a crypt,” said the girl at the table, “but thank you.  I’m Fiora, and these are my friends.  We’re the novices here.”  She offered her hand in the merchant’s way.  The other girls smiled or waved a little, but no one else gave a name.

Dubious, Cob reached over to clasp Fiora’s hand.  It was small in his, and rosy tan against his weather-browned skin, but her grip was strong and callused.  She squeezed his fingers as if trying to compete, so he squeezed back harder until she made a face and pulled free, shaking her hand vigorously.

“Uh, sorry,” Cob said, suddenly not sure he should have done that.

“
No, it’s fine.  So you’re the Guardian vessel!” she said brightly.

“
Yeah.”

“
No offense, but I always thought you’d be a woman.  The Guardian’s a spirit of fertility and protection, right?  Earth and water, the womb?  Though wood is kind of manly.”

The girls behind Fiora giggled, and Cob flushed.  “It’s not a woman,” he mumbled.

“Then what’s it like?  Being the vessel.”

As he eyed her, the urge to air his grievances rose like the tide.  He opened his mouth to tell the truth—that he hated and feared it, had never wanted it, that it had ruined his life—but before the words could form, he looked at their pretty, mildly interested faces and realized that they did not want to know.  And he did not want to tell them.  They were strangers and godfollowers, not friends.

Beside that, he didn’t want to sound like a whiner.

“
Annoying,” he said instead.

“
Why’s that?”

“
Because people ask me stupid questions.”

Fiora sat back, frowning, as the girls around her laughed.  “He’s right,” one of them said, “who asks a man why he’s not a woman?”

“That wasn’t what I—“

“
I have a better question,” said another girl behind Fiora.  She wore men’s garb too, but was fairer and sleeker, like a rapier next to a machete.  “I’m Tavia.  Can you really cause earthquakes like they say?”

Cob blinked.  “Like who says?”

“The old tomes,” said a brunette in a brown dress.  “The shamans' tales and the pre-Imperial stuff.  They say you can do lots of things.  Earthquakes, floods…”

“
Change the seasons,” said another girl.

“
Heal wounds, make plants grow…”

“
Blot out the sun!”

“
I don’t think I can do that,” said Cob cautiously.  The Guardian was silent inside.

“
So what can you do?” said Fiora.  The others leaned forward, no longer shy.

Cob closed his eyes.  In the dark of his mind he saw the void that had yawned beneath him—within him—when he fought the circles of imprisoning magic in Thynbell.  That terrifying emptiness.  He hated admitting that he had opened himself to such a thing.

“Break magic,” he said tersely.

Tavia crossed her arms.  “That’s it?”

“The Guardian does the rest.”

“
So why can’t you break your own bonds?” said another girl in a dress.  “If that’s your great skill, but you still got caught by the Empire’s trap…”

Cob shrugged and looked away.  “I dunno.  It’s like being in a cage; I can reach out but I can’t escape.  I guess the Guardian didn’t see it until it slammed shut.”

Some of the girls murmured in sympathy, which only made Cob feel more awkward.  “That’s unfortunate,” said Tavia, “but really, you can’t do anything else?”

“
Don’t hassle him,” said Fiora, eyeing Tavia.  “You say my questions are bad but then you start picking on him?”

“
I didn’t pick on him, I asked a pertinent question,” said Tavia.  “Just because it’s better than yours—“

“
You wouldn’t even have come over if I hadn’t had the guts to.”

“
Ha!  You think it’s a virtue, flinging yourself at him?”

Fiora slammed her mug on the table and stood, glaring.  “Are we gonna have to duel again?  Because I will kick your bratty ass!”

Tavia planted her fists on her hips and looked down her nose at Fiora, sneering, and as the other girls withdrew to a safe spectating distance, Cob realized the two were about to fight.  He was surprised that girls really did that.  When his Army comrades talked about catfights, they sounded like pure fantasies.

He was tempted to let this go on, just to see if hair-pulling and blouse-ripping really happened, but he knew it would be a bad idea.

“Hoi.  Ladies,” he said sharply.

They both turned their glares on him.  He scowled in return.  “I dunno the rules here, but I figure ‘no fighting in front of guests’ might be in there.  So quit it before I pitch you to the snow to cool off.”

Tavia’s expression went rigid, insulted, but Fiora cracked a grin and saluted smartly.  “Yessir, Guardian sir!” she said, and plunked down in her seat, ignoring Tavia’s daggered stare.

With a last frosty look for the two of them, Tavia jerked her chin to the other girls, and like a flock of birds they all wheeled together and fluttered off down a hallway.  As the last of them vanished into the corridor, Cob looked to Fiora, who sat with chin propped in hand and fingers drumming on the table.  “Why are you still here?” he said.

She just grinned.  He rubbed the bent bridge of his nose and told himself to simmer down.

“
All right,” he said finally, “if you’re not goin’ away, then explain a few things to me.  Like why you live in a pikin' crypt.”

“
It’s not a crypt.”

Cob pointed at the walls.  Even in the dining hall, they were covered with cubbies and caskets and plaques.

“That’s not what you think,” she said.  “There aren’t any corpses down here.  We’re the followers of the Sacred Flame; we cremate our dead.  But the most dedicated of us choose to stand guard over the living, so we mix their ashes with clay and make effigies that they can possess if we need them.”

Cob stared at her, then at the walls.  “Effigies with ghosts in them?”

“Trifolder souls.  Not ghosts.  Ghosts are the dead that Death has overlooked—and there aren’t many of those.”

“
Isn’t it…necromancy?”

She made a face at him.  “If it was the priestesses pulling the souls into the effigies against their will, then yes.  But it’s not.  The souls are all around us, and even though we can’t see them, they stand ready to come to our aid.  That’s one of the reasons we haven’t been rooted out, I think.  The Gold Army hates us but they need our healers and they know we have protectors.”

Cob’s skin crawled.  His imagination spun images of bronze plaques being kicked out, of clay men and women sliding from their cubbies and marching into the streets.  The witchfolk had been dangerous enough as a subversive social circle, but this was a whole new level of trouble.

“
Anyway,” said Fiora, seemingly oblivious to Cob’s distress, “we don’t all live here.  Just the trainees and the homeless, mostly us Breanans—us Sword Maidens.  Everyone else is topside.  The whole point of being a Brigyddian is that you care for the sick and injured and needy, so you need to be available to them.  Plus most of them are married and have children and that gets kind of difficult down here, especially if they're married to soldiers.  And the Brancirans run shops and forges and stuff; they're professionals, craftsfolk.  They don't need to hide.

“
Us Breanans, though...  We're extraneous.  Dangerous, according to the Empire.”

“
Why?  What d'you do?”

Her mouth quirked, and she leaned closer conspiratorially.  “We're soldiers of the faith.  Do you know how Breana came to be?”

“I didn't even know she existed 'til now.”