The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) (59 page)

With a bubbly sigh, the dead mage gave her a more directed, more vicious shove of energy.  Plaster tore from the wall as she impacted again, revealing a webwork of red thorn branches embedded beneath the surface.  They animated before she could brace herself, wrapping around every segment of her unfurled structure and reeling her in, and she shrieked and thrashed in futile multiplicity.

Cob stared, stomach roiling.  As if unbothered, the dead mage turned away.

The High Necromancer squirmed out from Cob’s protection and stood as the dead man advanced upon them.  The external barrier was too badly damaged to keep him out, but as he crossed the second ring, its coruscating energy lashed at him like so much lightning.  Yet what had been designed to bar and destroy lost its purpose when it touched him, instead spiraling up his arms and across his shoulders like an embrace—and for a moment six wings of ethereal flame spread from his back, his eyes blazing with a terrible light.

Then they faded, and with them the second ring.  Stepping forward, he reached out to tap the crumbling barrier of the center circle.  Blue sparks sprang from his finger, mixing with the red light of the ward.

“
Knock knock,” he said.  “Kindly send out the boy, Sashyarana.”

“
Enkhaelen,” she hissed, her bloody gaze flicking from the dead man to the downed Magistrate, to Cob and then back.  “I thought these bonds looked familiar.  Magistrate Tarsem told me it was some wretch named Morshoc.”

“
One and the same, I fear.  But it’s good to know that Tarsem still has a shred of loyalty.”  The corpse smiled.  “Considering this set-up, I was concerned.”

“
You have no right to be here.  Leave now, before—“

“
Before the haelhene overwhelm you?  There are more gathering outside, you know.  I hate to be involved in your little internecine disputes, so if you would just give me the boy, I will be on my way—conveniently removing the source of your trouble.  Oh.  Actually, Cobrin.”  The corpse turned its dead gaze to him.  “I might as well appeal to you.  I am here to rescue you, so tell your lovely protectress to stand down.”

“
Go pike yourself,” Cob said, shaking the glass from the cushion.

The corpse’s eyes narrowed, and it drew an absent sigil on the ward, the blue energy eating away at the red.  “Ah yes, the standard retort of the mentally enfeebled.  Let’s try this again.  My, Cob, you’re looking well!  I’m glad to see that you’ve escaped from the haelhene once and recovered!  Would you like to try it again all by yourself, or would you like some assistance from your long-time friend the Ravager?”

Cob stared at the corpse, flummoxed.  It rolled its eyes and slapped its palm against the barrier, looking back to the High Necromancer.

“
Last chance,” it said.  “I have great respect for you as a fellow practitioner, but either you let me in or I come and get him myself.”

“
Any debt we owe to you has long been paid, Enkhaelen,” said the High Necromancer.  “If this boy came to us for aid against you, I can not in good conscience allow you to take him.  The severity of these bonds, and these soul-splinters—“

“
Yes, yes, you are morally outraged.  Spare me the lecture.”

The High Necromancer’s face tightened.  “Very well.  You have shed our blood here, and thus have set in motion your own fate.”  With that, she reached one hand to Cob’s chest, gripped something ethereal, and yanked.

Unutterable pain ripped through Cob, whiting out the world.  He could not breathe enough to scream.  For a moment he thought she had torn his heart out; he could not feel it beating.  Then it thudded again, heavy and unstable, and he jolted back to awareness to find himself on his knees, panting for air.

“
Are you trying to provoke me?” the corpse said from the other side of the barrier.

“
I am doing as was requested.  Removing his bonds.”

“
Well, if that’s how you want it, your new incarnation can beg my forgiveness.”

One hand still on the barrier, the corpse made a tugging motion, and the red ward began to disintegrate into bright motes that spun along his arm.  Cob staggered up, still gripping the cushion like a weapon.  The High Necromancer caught his shoulder and turned him toward her.

”You were right to come to me,” she said, setting her hand on his chest again.  Though her bleeding eyes had made her face a mess, she looked resolute and somehow still beautiful through the horror.  “Do not fault yourself, and do not listen to this one’s lies.  He will not help you.  He is a viper waiting to strike.”

“
Propaganda,” the corpse snarled, and tore the central barrier apart.

At the same moment, the High Necromancer yanked another bond from Cob’s soul.  Though he was ready for it, he almost crumpled again; through the wash of white, he saw her fling the band of power at the corpse like it was a serpent, and saw the corpse dodge it desperately.  It flickered and dissipated just a few yards beyond him.

The dodge gave the High Necromancer time enough to form what looked like a network of needles between her hands and force them at the corpse, freezing it in its tracks.  Its eyes rolled and its torso spasmed, but the limbs stayed rigid as if transfixed by nails.

“
Go,” she snapped at Cob, twitching her fingers at the corpse like a puppeteer struggling with twisted strings.

Lurching to his feet, Cob took her advice and made for the stairs.

As he crossed the deadened circles, he saw Fiora still in shock, staring at the assassin bound to the wall.  It—she—no longer struggled, as if the red thorn-vines had somehow sedated the broken-mirror monstrosity she had become, but more vines were burrowing out through the plaster nearby and reaching toward the chamber’s other occupants, including Fiora.

Cob veered toward her at the same time that the air crackled behind him.  The High Necromancer shrieked, then came a mass slithering, chiming sound that seemed to start at all corners of the chamber then concentrate all too close.  Grabbing Fiora by the arm, Cob turned toward the stairwell only to find the entry covered by the hovering fragments of the stained-glass roof.

With a grimace, he hefted the cushion and charged straight into them.

“
Idiot!
” he heard from behind as he crashed through, several shards puncturing the padding and scoring lines along his arm.  His feet came down awkwardly on the stairs beyond and he stumbled, momentum thrusting him onward; for a moment he fell blindly but then the cushion struck something half-stable and diverted him sideways.  His hip clipped the banister and he went over, free-falling briefly before slamming down on top of a crate.

Black stars danced in his vision.  His side and hip burned, and a thousand points of agony bit into his arm, but he heard Fiora rattling down the stairs, calling his name, and from right above him someone else began to chant in the wraith tongue.  He forced himself from the crate.

The floor was further down than he had expected, and he hit the tiles hard.  A hand gripped his wrist and wrenched him up and he was running, past screens and startled clerks.

A red flash from ahead and Fiora shrieked and veered aside, but Cob could not stop his momentum.  Passing her, he ran face first into a red mage-ward.  It felt like running into a padded wall.  He rebounded, breaking her grip, and looked up to see a bloody-eyed Haarakash weaving its fingers at him.

Fiora broke a crystal bone across the back of the Haarakash’s head.  The man staggered and Cob lunged up, slamming his shoulder through the weakened ward and into his gut, and with the full power of his legs he flipped the startled man straight over his back and resumed his run.

More stairs, too many accursed stairs.  Thunder from above.  The world swam, red and black and white.  Fiora had his arm again and suddenly they were bursting through a door into a sea-green tunnel and veering toward a slash of sunlight.  The plaza stretched out before them, the thorn garden beyond, and all around them the brightly-dressed Haarakash stopped to stare.

Except for those who raised their hands and began to cast.

There were no good options, but Fiora chose for him.  Hand locked with his, she hauled him across the plaza and down the steps, into the garden.

He could not catch enough breath to ask her plan.  From behind came an explosion and a faint flash of heat, and he looked back to see flames roiling up from the top of the tower and red flecks in the sky that must have been people.  Flying people, lashing at each other with lines of light.  From the inferno below, long tendrils of burning vine stretched up toward the combatants like the arms of a great sea-beast.

“
Where’s our rooms?” Fiora panted, still dragging him onward.  “Our stuff?  We need to escape!”

Cob tried to think but his head felt heavy.  His arm and shoulder still bled freely, and as they moved he felt stiffness inside them—pieces of glass embedded in the muscle.  Adrenaline kept the pain under control but between the agony of the High Necromancer’s magic and the steady blood-loss, he knew he was wearing down.

Their feet pounded the tile paths they had walked last night.  All around them, the wild hedges and thorn-brambles seemed to move, but Cob could not be sure if that was real or just his senses starting to go.  Everything looked red.  Fiora pulled him stubbornly, aiming for a tower across the way as if she had remembered their destination.  Her hand was sweat-slick in his but he tried to keep his grip.

Suddenly she stumbled and yelped, and there was a snapping sound.  Cob winced automatically, thinking about ankles, but then she was running as normal again.  His boots crunched on something brittle that had pushed between the tiles.

Something else clamped onto his calf.  Fingers.  He took a yanking stride and heard a crack but the grip remained even though he could move freely.  Another step and he glanced down to see dirty finger-bones clutching his leg.

Fiora shrieked, and Cob stumbled into her as she pulled up short.  The glass in his arm grated on bone and darkness walloped him, driving reality aside.  The next thing he knew, he was on one knee, nearly off the tile walkway with a three-fingered hand of skeletonized crystal reaching for his face.

He struck it away and tried to get to his feet only to find the hills heaving around them.  Loose earth split, thorny shrubs buckled aside, and from the uprucked soil emerged the dead—some old and broken, with bones split and skulls half-caved in, some new enough to still bear scraps of flesh.  Red roots riddled them, restraining the newer corpses, but the skeletons had been picked clean and grappled freely for Cob and Fiora, shining strands of energy stringing their bones together where their joints had failed.

Cob realized then, with a sickening sink of his gut, that this was not a wild pleasure-garden.  There had been no other sojourners here last night because this was a memorial ground.  A graveyard.

Hands closed on his legs and gripped his arms.  The pain from the glass paralyzed him.  Nearby, Fiora struggled furiously and managed to knock a few skulls away before she was wrestled to the ground, dirt-covered hands pinning her down.

A red blur swept in and stopped in midair, and Cob looked up to see Morshoc’s—Enkhaelen’s—borrowed corpse standing above the thorn-brush as if perched on invisible steps.  One arm was gone at the shoulder and deep gashes had opened its side, showing viscera, but it grinned delightedly.  At its back, a wheel of blue-black energy turned slowly, strange sigils forming and swirling within its confines, its edges flickering like flame.  Lines of energy ran in a shifting braid down the corpse’s remaining arm and drifted from its fingertips in dissipating threads.

“No point in running,” it said, waving its one hand lightly.  The skeletons and rotting bodies swayed with the motion.  “Now—  Oh pike it, have you hurt yourself again?  Idiot child, you’re just flesh when the Guardian is asleep.”

Cob snarled at the corpse, but it made a stiff sideways gesture with its forearm then moved it back, leaving a blue afterimage of the limb imprinted on the air.  The controlling strands continued to drift from those phantom fingers, and all the skeletons went still.

Floating closer, the corpse muttered something and twitched its fingers, and long needles of light stretched out like the High Necromancer’s probes.  The blue image followed along, attached to the corpse’s arm at the elbow, as the corpse reached out and plunged those needles into Cob’s wounds.

Numbness flowed from them, dampening the agony.  Cob tried to squirm away but the skeletal hands held him too tightly, and the corpse tsked and narrowed its eyes, then leaned down to run fingers along the bloody gashes.  Threads of cold power insinuated themselves into his torn flesh.  Making a fist, the corpse gestured as if yanking them, and shards and slivers of glass spat from Cob’s flesh in a red rainbow to tinkle across the ground.

“Do you know why I think the Trifolders hunt my kind?” the corpse said conversationally as it stretched its needles to prod into the largest of Cob’s wounds.  He winced as the muscles and flesh were manually stitched.  “Because the Brigyddians can’t stand to have competition as healers, especially not from folk with such 'disgusting' habits.  Oh, I’m sure it did have something to do with the corpse-stealing, animating the dead...spreading plagues, mass murder, everything the rumors say.  But for most of us?  Jealousy, simple jealousy.”