The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) (61 page)

Needle-pricks ran up his back.

“A little help?” he called, hoarse with fear.

Before him, Fiora stood stock still, staring down at the beheaded corpse.  A crystal-edge sword trembled in her grip, and he remembered that she had never killed before.  Still, this was no time for philosophizing.  “Hoi!  Snap out of it!”

She turned her head slowly, wild-eyed, then shook herself with visible effort.  Casting the blade aside, she moved to kneel down over Cob.  “Goddess, what’s happening?” she said as she pulled her little knife out to saw at the roots.

“
The Thorn Protector, the Carad Whatever,” Cob guessed, glancing down the path at the Haarakash.  Enkhaelen’s blade-bombardment had dropped many and sent others into retreat, but those who were still mobile were hoisting their fallen comrades off the ground.  Two lifted the wounded High Necromancer despite her cries of pain, and for good reason: the earth below her bloomed with hungry red roots which twisted upward with every drop of blood that fell.

Further down the walkway and onto the plaza, red energies sparked against each other as the factions dueled.

“We have to get out of here,” Fiora said as she cut through a big hank of filaments.  Cob tore his left arm up, hissing as the last roots ripped away, and kicked at the ones trying to bind his legs until Fiora managed to cut his other arm free.  Lurching to his feet, he pulled her up too.  Shreds of plant fiber hung from him, rapidly greying.

“
How?  Where?” he said.

“
This way,” came another voice.

Cob and Fiora looked over, both tensing, to see a blindfolded Haarakash man standing on the path the way they had been fleeing.  He had a pack over each shoulder and a swordbelt in his hand.  It took a moment for Cob to recognize their erstwhile guide.

“Adram?” he said.  “You all right?”

“
These are yours,” responded Adram Kemithos, and tossed the swordbelt to Fiora.  She caught it and buckled it on like reclaiming a piece of herself.  He slung one of the packs at Cob.  “I was by your rooms and saw the commotion.  What happened?  Did the unbinding fail?”

“
The bad necromancer found me,” Cob said, nodding to the headless corpse.  “And there were haelhene.”

“
Ah.  That is unfortunate.  Come, this way,” he said, tossing the other pack to Fiora then turning on the path.  “We must get you to the barrier.  Haaraka is no longer safe for you.”

Cob looked in frustration to where the High Necromancer was being carried away.  “Is there another hub, somewhere else I can—“

“You are bleeding.  You have taken part in a conflict and are marked.  If you do not wish to stay with us forever, you must leave now.”

“
How can I trust you?”

Adram looked back, expression inscrutable.  “It is your choice.  Lliancandrien and I shade our eyes from the haelhene souls who would provoke us, not from you.  Neither of us wish to join in the old wars.  Now please follow.  We know the way out.”

Jaw clenched, Cob stared down the blood-spattered path one more time, at the Haarakash fleeing with their wounded while the thorn reclaimed the bodies both new and old and while mage fought mage along the plaza.  The noncombatants had all fled, leaving crushed fruit and forgotten baskets on the tiles, lost parchments drifting in the wind.

The top of the ritual tower burned like a tallow candle.

Cob shouldered his pack grimly, thinking,
This is all my fault.

Then, with the red tendrils still reaching for his heels, he followed Adram and Fiora through the graveyard of thorn at a run.

*****

Magistrate Tarsem wiped his cheeks with a once-white cloth and peered around the corner of the tower, looking for his enemies.  He had mostly recovered from the conflict with his wraith-soul, but had slivers of glass in his back that needed to be removed before they worked themselves deeper.

Unfortunately, he could not rest even though the fight had moved away.  The haelhene were abroad and the High Necromancer’s adherents would have questions for him about his aid to Enkhaelen.  The ritual tower might be safe—the people in there were just clerks trying to salvage papers and research materials and a few lesser mages using wards to contain the fire at the top—but he could not be sure.  He did not know if he should chance it.

He did not see the hare hop awkwardly up to the plaza and skitter to the corpse nearby—one of the High Necromancer’s apprentices, struck down as he came to her aid.  But he did see the corpse rise.

He lashed out at it automatically with a bolt of pain-fueled force, but the corpse took it with barely a stagger.

“
Is that any way to treat a friend?” it said, raising its head.

Tarsem recoiled, grimacing.  The strike that had killed the apprentice had torn part of his face away, leaving an avulsed flap over his right eye and a great gash across his cheek that showed teeth and jawbone.  As the Magistrate watched, the dead apprentice reached up and cut a slash through his right eyebrow with a broken thumbnail.

“Honored Spirit,” Tarsem said, recognizing that mark.  “I apologize, I did not—“

“
It’s fine.  I’m just here to inform you,” said the corpse.  Tarsem’s stomach roiled as he watched its tongue move inside its torn mouth.  “I will let our agreement stand regardless of your countrymen’s actions.  Keep sending me the artifacts, weapons, everything, and I’ll keep the Empire off your back.”

Tarsem’s knees went weak, but not from relief.  He gripped the edge of the tower to hold himself steady.  “Honored Spirit, I fear that I will no longer be in a position to assist you.”

“Then your replacement, your aides, everyone who has taken part in this trade.  I made the deal with your distant predecessor and I will remake it once you’ve had time to settle down again.”

Tarsem tasted copper in the back of his mouth, though whether it was from fear or injury, he could not tell.  He shook his head slowly, too aware of the necromancer’s keen eyes on him.  “No, Honored Spirit,” he said.  “You have brought your war into our realm, assaulted our people and a petitioner to us, awakened the Carad Narath—“

“You say that like I did it all myself,” responded Enkhaelen acidly.  “If I recall right, it was one of yours who started the fight, and a whole lot of yours who are waging war right now.  This has very little to do with me.  All I wanted was to extract that idiot from this place.”

“
Nevertheless, Honored Spirit, you—“

“
Stop.  Just…don’t talk.  I’m having a very bad day and it’s barely noon.  Nod or shake your head only.  Are you saying that you want me to dissolve our agreement?”

Grimacing, Tarsem nodded slowly.

“Even though it’s been a perfectly good partnership for more than a century?  Even though I bought your people the time to raise your barrier when my Emperor was at your border?  Even though all I ask for is haelhene relics that would only help your internal foes?”

“
The Carad Narath—“

“
I said silence.
”

Tarsem closed his mouth but did not hang his head.  He was not the first to handle dealings with this erratic Imperial servant, but never had they made him comfortable, and after this disaster he knew it was time to cease pandering.  “Haaraka will stand or fall on its own merits, without your assistance,” he said despite the corpse’s burning glare.  “We welcome the Risen Phoenix Empire's advance upon us.  Every drop of blood you feed to the Carad Narath increases our rlkh—“

Lungs hitching, he doubled over, feeling liquid heat bubbling up his throat as one of the glass slivers cut through.  Bright blood foamed from his lips, but he forced himself to look up at Enkhaelen in defiance.

And found Enkhaelen closing in, frowning with his tattered face.  “Hold still,” the necromancer ordered, but Tarsem tried to withdraw only to feel a cold touch on his brow that locked his muscles rigid.  His wraith-soul rattled within him, echoing his fear as Enkhaelen moved around to his back.

Icy needles prodded his wounds.  Then the glass shards twitched and slid free of him to slip down his skin on trails of blood.  Another cold, piercing, twisting feeling and the gash in his lung closed.

“
I will give you some time to calm down and reconsider,” said Enkhaelen in his ear.  “I have not been your enemy today, and trust me, you do not want that to change.  For now, I will leave you with a warning.  The disasters are coming.  Prepare yourselves.”

Tarsem heard a wheezing sigh leave the corpse, then the meaty thud as it collapsed to the tiles.  The chill that had frozen his muscles ebbed.

Straightening, he coughed a few more bright specks of blood from pained but unpunctured lungs and looked down upon the mangled face of his former associate.  No animating force remained; Enkhaelen had abandoned it and, perhaps, Haaraka.  Uncertain what to do, Tarsem passed a hand over his sweating face then looked out into the still-heaving garden, into the pitiless knotwork of thorns that was his master.

It had been a long day, and it seemed it would be longer yet.

Dasira walked alone up the ice-slicked path from town, a rashi cheroot smouldering in the corner of her mouth.  She had left Lark still in bed with a hangover, the Circle robe chit sitting on the bedside table waiting to be redeemed.  They had netted some extra money in the evening’s card game, and Dasira had spent some time browsing the shops, not really desiring to wear Trifolder hand-me-downs.  She had a new holdout knife now, and a coat, and a green-and-yellow sash to satisfy the little fragment of the laundress that still lingered in the back of her mind.

Now, she was taking the continued peace and quiet as an opportunity to check in on Ilshenrir.

She scanned the scruffy woodland, hands crammed in the pockets of her new coat.  Leaving the boundary of Turo had lifted the hot weight from her shoulders, and her mind was clear.  The rashi made it calm as well.  She knew that she was risking Enkhaelen’s attention by being outside, which was why she had not camped out here just to be away from the stinging Trifolder aura, but someone had to make sure the two halves of the party kept in touch.

At first, she saw nothing.  The snow had melted somewhat over the course of the day, and her boots squelched through it more than crunched, but now as the sun tilted into the west, clouds swarmed the sky.  The low stone wall where Cob had vanished looked as dull as ever, and the evergreens hung thick with icicles, their afternoon drips already refrozen.  A few winter birds flitted among the skeletal brush, but otherwise there was only crystalline silence.

She exhaled a smoky breath and paused on the path, squinting.

Grey.  Something grey among the trees.

That was Ilshenrir, then, mostly hidden by the dark trunks nearest the wall, one hand outstretched to thin air as if touching an invisible barrier.  As still as death.

Dasira flicked ash from her cheroot, contemplated him for a moment, then broke through the soft snow in his direction.

He heard her approach—she saw the faint twitch of his hooded head—but did not lower his hand or turn to look.  As she drew closer, she squinted at the spot he touched.  It was hard to see through the screen of trees, but there seemed to be something hanging in the air under his fingers.

A ripple of unease passed through her.  She slid one hand under her coat to touch Serindas’ hilt, and the blade suffused her with its steady hunger. 
Could be a rashi hallucination
, she told herself, but there was speculation as to whether those were hallucinations at all.  They only happened around intense arcane workings, so might be magic coming clear to the normally-unseeing human eye.

As she closed in, she saw it better.  A fine spidering of redness beneath Ilshenrir’s hand.

“What are you doing?” she called out, multi-threaded paranoia thrumming a soft symphony in her mind. 
Is he talking to the Haarakash?  Is he Enkhaelen’s second agent?

He did not answer, though his hood tipped slightly to acknowledge her presence.  She frowned around the cheroot and pressed forward, fingers tapping their familiar staccato against Serindas as she moved among the trees.

The snow was thinner here, the ground clogged with low brush.  Ilshenrir was only a few strides in, his side presented to her, his face shaded.  A tangle of briars guarded his back.

From within those briars came a low, rolling growl, and a great mass of grey fur and muscle and glaring eyes rose into view.

Dasira stopped in her tracks, alarmed.  She knew from a glance that it was Arik in wolf form, but something was deeply wrong.  He was bigger, his shoulders easily on level with her ribs, and his fur bristled thickly around his heavy head, full of quills.  His eyes, which even in wolf-form usually held their human cleverness, were flat and pale and strange.

Much like he had been when they chased Cob to Erestoia, and when Cob had lain wounded in the Damiels’ basement.  His lips peeled back from his long, sharp teeth as their eyes locked, and she forced herself to look past him, knowing a challenge when she saw one.

“What’s going on?” she hissed at Ilshenrir.

The wraith did not move, but said in a low, calm voice, “He is anxious without the Guardian.  Alone, he is a wolf in a strange land, and salves his fear with anger.”

Dasira grimaced.  She could understand that.

The wolf kept growling, but when she did not look at him or move from the fringe of the trees, he settled down again, all but hidden in the brush.

“So what’s he doing here?” she said quietly.

“
I believe he is contemplating whether he should kill me.”

“
What?  Why?”

“
Why would he not?  But I am merely monitoring the barrier, so he has no immediate reason to strike.”  Ilshenrir paused, then added in a lower tone, “Something has awoken the Carad Narath.  It bodes ill.”

A chill went through her, and she eyed the red network.  “Can you tell what’s happening?”

“No.  I dare not extend my perceptions beyond the barrier.  If the Carad Narath senses me, he will devour me, but his attention is currently more…centrally located.  He is angry.”

“
You can’t sense Cob or Fiora?”

“
No.  But I have been monitoring the barrier since they departed, and noted someone else entering last night.  One signature, the same as your earring.”

Dasira gripped Serindas’ hilt, not sure if she should take that as an accusation, but Ilshenrir did not even glance her way. 
He would be right to accuse
, she thought dully, remembering her last conversation with Enkhaelen. 
Pike that bastard.  He went for them instead of us.

“
Also, there are portals standing open to the north of Turo.”

She stiffened.  He continued, “I have been monitoring their behavior since they opened a mark ago.  They resonate against the barrier slightly; it is not wise of them to be so close, but I imagine they have their reasons.  Their signature is Gold Army but I can discern little more.”

“And you didn’t think to tell us—“  Dasira stopped herself before she could start shouting, mind racing over the options. 
Going for both sides?  But working with the Gold Army isn’t his style, and neither is tipping them off.  Did the Golds track us on their own?  Not impossible, and we’ve been seen enough for there to be gossip.
  “How many people have passed through?”

“
I have sensed over thirty large disturbances.”

“
You need to get Lark,” she said.  “She’s at the Damiels’.  Get her out of there, get the others’ stuff, be ready to run.  I should go check this out.”

“
What is it that you think you can do?” said Ilshenrir, turning his head just enough to regard her through one citrine eye.

Grimacing, she let go of Serindas and set her hand over her bracer instead.  “Deal with them, however necessary.”

“On your own?”

“
I’ve done it before.”

“
As you will, then.”

She nodded to him curtly and turned away.  Her claim was not braggadocio—she had emptied more than one garrison—but that had been with free rein over her bracer and its powers.  Right now, it throbbed sullenly from its extended stay in the Trifold aura, and even were it fully capable, charging straight into the enemy ranks was not something she could live through.  She was made to attack from ambush, steal a body and use it against its former allies, then return to her original body for the getaway.  Stealth and treachery, not war.

And Ilshenrir’s behavior put her hackles up.  He had not even tried to contact them, had waited with the news until she found him and waded through his issues with Arik.  Perhaps he did not consider the Golds a threat because they were on the other side of town, or because he was better than them, but it was piking inconsiderate not to send warning.

Light-blasted piking wraiths.  Why is he even involved in this?

She did not follow the path back into Turo.  She did not want to be restricted, so once she was out of the trees, she got up onto the wall and started running, the Haarakash barrier nudging her gently from one side.  The stones were ice-free, the air almost tepid, and she made good time in a long, slight arc south-to-north.  Snow-cloaked fields flitted past on her left, but few buildings stood within earshot, as if the Turonans knew better than to build close to the barrier.

By the time she approached the northern edge of town, demarcated by a goat fence and a new tree-line, she had lost her cheroot somewhere.  There were more hills, more woods beyond the valley town, and great stretches of pristine snow.

She began to suspect that Ilshenrir had gotten rid of her.

Then she caught the acrid scent of the Call.

The abominable apparatus in the roof of her mouth twinged in response, and her lips curled in an automatic sneer.  She paused on the wall and let the hollow fang-like structures slide free of her soft palate.  They were made of the same material extruded by her bracer, the same stuff that knit her muscles and bones back together and left the scar-like patches of ashy white in place of torn skin.  If she so wished, she could be covered in such little fangs and thorns.

But that would be ugly and pointless.  The fang-structures in her mouth were not for biting, but for shaping the silent speech of the intelligent Imperial abominations: the Call she scented right now.  Though she did not know how she understood the mix of venom and pheromone that composed it, she did.

To her sharp senses, it said,
Gather.  Prepare to hunt.

Dasira licked dry lips. 
Must be veiled
, she thought, regarding the empty hills. 
That means several powerful mages to cover up portals as well as tracks.  And that was a young senvraka’s Call, which would indicate one or more of those and at least a dozen lesser abominations.  With that kind of crew, they can’t be thinking of attacking the town.  None of the abominations will be able to get through.

Unless the mages assault it first and the abominations pick people off as they flee.

A standard tactic, though she did not know how it would work against Trifolders, since the mages normally used fire for that and Brigyddians had no fear of it.  Perhaps the Golds had not known where they were assaulting?  No, despite her low opinion of them, they were not that incompetent.  Which meant…

I don’t know.  Guess I’ll have to ask.

She knew that she had probably been seen, and that her behavior was suspicious enough to mark her as a threat.  Bodythieves had no scent unless they chose to or were badly injured, so the veiled troops would not know she was one of them until she showed it.

Gathering her own Call in the back of her throat, she let her not-fangs shape it as she stepped down from the wall.  Slowly, cautiously, she moved forward through the snow, rolling up the left-hand sleeve of her coat and the tunic beneath it.  The black bracer squeezed a little harder on her arm.

Here to report
, she exhaled, the Call burning across her tongue.

A tingle ran over her skin.  The air before her shimmered, and suddenly the hills were not so pristine.

Not so clean-scented either, for with her inclusion in the veil, she also caught all the abomination-stink that had been masked.  She quick-counted thirty-four figures before her: seven mages in Gold robes, a terribly handsome Amand in a Gold uniform, five ruengriin with teardrop pendants gleaming at their throats, and twenty-one ‘hounds’.  Thiolgriin, wolf-eaters.  With golden teardrops on their collars, they looked like huge hairless grey dogs, but she knew what they were under the illusion: madmen twisted into bestial form by their conversion.  Even with their false appearances, they still exhibited hints of their nature, drooling from unhinged jaws or snapping at each other recklessly or just staring with dazed eyes.

At the back of their group, a portal stood open into a wide, white-lit chamber.

“So report,” said the handsome Amand—the senvraka.  He beckoned her forward, eyes hooded imperiously, and she realized that he was too new to tell her generation from her Call.

It took effort not to smile.  She strode through the snow, gaze running over him and then to the ruengriin, to the weapons sheathed at their belts.  Not one had the telltale hilt of an akarriden blade.

“I’ve been in the town,” she said, considering her words carefully.  “It’s warded from end to end and full up with Trifolders.  Not a soft target.  What are you looking for?”

“
Who assigned you?” the senvraka rejoined.

Dasira did smirk this time, and reached into her coat for the scroll Enkhaelen had rescued along with her bracer.  She had thought about this during the run, and had a decent plan.  “The Crimson General,” she said, unfurling the Hunter writ to show its red seal.  “I’m out of my jurisdiction, I know, which is why I’m just observing.”

The senvraka snatched the writ from her hand and examined the rip in one corner before skimming the words.  “Cobrin of Risholnis, Kerrindryr,” he read off it, then eyed her.  “Our quarry.  And who are you?”

“
Cerithe,” she replied easily.  “Aenkelagi infiltrator-class.”