The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) (63 page)

The vines tugged at Cob’s arm, urging him forward.  Full of trepidation, he stepped closer and felt his hand sink into a mass of warm energy, slowly pulsing like a monumental heart.  The red filaments twined around his fingers and hooked along every stone ridge and bark burr on his armor, but they did not restrain him.  Beyond them, he felt the cold aura of winter pressing on the barrier, and knew that this was what kept Haaraka active while the northern world slept under the snow.  This strong vitality, this imprisoned essence.

And he felt the Thorn Protector too, a great and weary spirit shaped like hills and valleys and labyrinths of briar, root-woven graves and arching trees, submerged thorn reefs and watchful stands of red grass.  A spirit of wood, perhaps the strongest one alive, and one that should be kin to the Guardian, not its enemy.  A vigilant thing, protective, tormented, regretful, but not angry.  Not vengeful.

Not toward him, at least.

In the back of his mind, the Guardian’s darkness slithered up.  He felt it flow through him to urge his hands toward the eye.  Cautious, suspicious, he let himself do it, and the eye did not flinch away.

He curled his hands around it, its corded nerves entwining his fingers.  It stared at him, lidless, incapable of expression, looking both at and through him.  For a moment, breathing slow and shallow, Cob thought it might be a signal of truce.  Its vines had spread up his arms to drape loosely across his shoulders, almost an embrace, and the Guardian cupped his hands around it just the same.

Then a single vindictive thought pressed from the blackness into his mind.

‘
Crush it.’

His fingers twitched automatically, clutching at the fleshy orb, and he felt its vitreous nature under his palms.  No harder to destroy than any living eye.  He tried to pull away, but his black armor fixed him in position and bent his fingers closer, deforming the eye’s shape.

The vines that draped him did not stir.

No
, he thought. 
No.
  He started to release his mental grip on the Guardian, but it did not slip away like he had hoped, instead pushing forward to take control of bones and sinews.  Gritting his teeth, he poured every ounce of will into regaining command, but still felt the eye squeezing horribly in his grip.

Its gaze burned into him and for a moment he wondered why he was trying.  Maybe this would hurt the Thorn, but why should he care?  He held no loyalty to either side.  He wanted out of it.  If killing an enemy spirit was what it took…

Shut up!
he thought. 
I won’t be your tool of petty vengeance!

But there was no change.  He drew in a deep breath and concentrated on pushing the Guardian down, but it was like trying to stop a flood with a feather.  The eye bulged weirdly, and the vines began to hiss over his armor, drawing him toward the barrier as if to swallow him.

“Don’t be a bastard,” Cob growled through his teeth, fixating on his hands.  “You say that I’m the one in control, but here you are, tryin’ to play me like a puppet.  This is wrong and you know it.  You can’t make your mistakes go away by makin’ stupid new ones, so stop it and let me clean up your Light-cursed mess!”

Everything went very still, inside and out, and Cob wondered if he was wrong to swear by the Light.

But the cursethorn did not pull at him, and after a long silent moment, the darkness in his limbs began to recede.  Bark armor flaked from his shoulders and the antlers fell away as the Guardian withdrew, and this time he let it.  Slowly, sulkily, it retreated back into the depths.

Cob loosened his grip on the eye, panting.  It watched him as impassively as ever.  The vines still draped his arms and shoulders but no longer tugged, and as a wave of wooziness hit him he thought he felt them holding him up.

“’M sorry about that,” he told it.  “The Guardian’s kinda an asshole.  And I suppose we shoulda greeted you when we came in, not jus’ stomped around and made trouble.  And sorry about the Ravager, and…I’m babblin’ now…”

Two long red tendrils reached from the mass to trace down Cob’s cheeks.  He managed an uneasy smile, worried that it was flirting.

Then the thorns drove down into the muscle just beneath each collarbone, and he choked and clutched at the eye spasmodically.  One good wrench of his arms could have torn it from its socket.

But he had made his decision.  He let it go.  The thorns dug in deep and then snapped, leaving their tips embedded in him, and with that, the vines fell away.  He staggered back and sat down hard, dizzy and confused and pained.

As he lost touch with the warmth of the barrier, the eye and the pulsating mass of thorns vanished into thin air.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and muttered, “Son of a bitch.”  The fire in his chest was ebbing, and when he peered at the wounds, he saw that they had already closed.  Faint red slivers showed beneath his dark skin.

A groan rose from behind him and he turned to find Fiora and Adram shaking off their stupor, the ground around them clear of thorns.  Only a few withered petals remained on the cracked earth.

“
What happened?” said Fiora, rubbing her eyes.

“
I think we’ve been dismissed.”  Looking back to the barrier, he reached out and felt just a faint film of warmth and a twinge from the thorns inside him.  Then his fingers pushed through into cold air.  “We can go.”

“
Then go, and be well,” said Adram, climbing to his feet.  “I am for home, the sooner the better.”

Cob nodded and stood, drawing Fiora up after him.  She still held the medallion and though he sensed he no longer needed it, he clasped his hand over hers anyway.  With a last long look at the cursed wilderness, he stepped through the barrier, pulling her in his wake.

Cold air washed over him, and his boots crunched on thin, frozen snow.  Despite the chill and the boot-leather that separated him from the ground, he felt all the roots and sleeping seeds around him, all the small lives huddled away until spring.  And as the glitter of the crossing faded from his eyes, he saw a figure awaiting him among the skeletal trees.  A small figure, dressed warmly, arms loosely crossed.

Lerien smiled.  “Been a while, Cob.”

A small, answering smile touched Cob’s mouth, but he forced it into a wary scowl.  Lerien looked the same as ever—small, blond and bright-eyed, dressed in High Country Kerrindryr leather and goat-wool though he looked nothing like a Kerrindrixi.  Probably eight years old.  He had been Cob’s best friend throughout his childhood, yet he had never existed.

For all that he was aware of it, Cob could not help his relief.  He had almost thought Lerien lost; the boy had not reappeared since Darilan’s death in the Mist Forest.

“Why are you here?” he said gruffly.

The boy shrugged.  Fiora’s hand tightened on Cob’s and he realized that he had spoken aloud to this figment of his mind.  Embarrassment touched him, then quelled.  It did not matter.

“I’m here to lead you to the firebird, of course,” said Lerien.

Cob narrowed his eyes.  He had dreamed of Lerien many times, and in most of those dreams they were climbing along the cliff-faces in Kerrindryr, moving slowly toward a glacier-worn cleft in the rock, toward a waterfall beyond which glowed a vital light.  Lerien had always referred to it as the firebird, but they had never reached it—never even gotten close.

“We’re not in Kerrindryr anymore,” he said.

“
It was never in Kerrindryr.  You know that.  You know what it means.”

Cob just stared at him.  After a moment, the boy shook his head, shaggy blond hair moving as if underwater.  “Don’t worry.  All you have to do is follow.  You’ll understand soon.”

“I don’t have time for games.  If you can’t tell me, then—“

Cob paused as the dark figures of the Guardians stepped from among the trees.  The five familiar ones at the front and then more behind, hundreds or thousands of shadowy shapes filling the winter-killed forest, a shifting panoply of faces and armor and soft, melding whispers.  Lerien cringed and moved closer to Cob, eyeing them.  Every one of them watched the boy in turn.

“What do you want?” Cob snapped, angry over their behavior with the Thorn.  He moved automatically to place himself between Lerien and the Guardians, and only remembered that Fiora was still with him when he accidentally hauled her along.  He glanced to her and saw the wariness in her round face, the shiver of her shoulders as the cold bit into her.

“
Sorry, it’s…it’s jus’ the Guardians,” he said, and released her hand.  “You should get y’stuff on.”

She nodded warily and shrugged off her pack, and he returned his glare to the Guardians, the phantom of Lerien clinging to his side.

Arms crossed, Haurah the skinchanger was the first to respond.  “We want to follow him,” she said, nodding toward the boy.  “You’re not a fool, Ko Vrin.  Surely you know that the firebird is his master.”

Cob grimaced.  It had occurred to him, but he had never wanted to believe that all along, Lerien had been trying to lure him to Morshoc.  Enkhaelen.

“The unbinding worked,” said Erosei.  “We are nearly free now.  The splinters and hooks still attach us to you, but we can grasp our full power.  We can extend it to you to fight and destroy Enkhaelen.”

“
And you’ll let me do it my way, right?” Cob said, glaring around at the Guardians.  “You won’t take over my pikin’ hands and try to make me do things I refuse to do?”

Erosei sneered, but Vina was the one who spoke, her fleshy features calm.  “What you did was right, Cob, and I thank you for it.  You must understand how hard this is for us, hunting our former companion while facing the misdeeds of our past incarnations.  There are things we can not force ourselves to do or say, no matter how much we wish for them.  It is you, with your detachment from our history, who can perhaps mend these rifts we have created.  Please realize that it is as difficult for us to face the Thorn peacefully as it is for you to face Enkhaelen.”

“For any of us to do so with Enkhaelen,” Haurah growled.

Annoyed but somewhat mollified, Cob said, “You call him that so easily.  Like you already knew.”

“It was his old name,” said Erosei, “but he’s used many over the centuries.  Guess he’s getting back to his, heh, roots.”  Haurah snickered, and the two fierce Guardians traded amused glances.  Cob wondered if he could smack them for making bad jokes.

“
But you couldn’t tell me that before?” he said instead.  “What if it was important?  The High Necromancer knew his proper name.  She mighta done things different if I’d told her it.”  Erosei shrugged loosely, and Cob glared at him.  “What else’ve you been keepin’ from me?”

“
Thousands of years of memory,” Vina intoned solemnly.  “The Guardian vessels are meant to be infused with our knowledge at the moment that we join them, but your bonds prevented it.  All we could give you were a few snatches of our history, the most momentous events of each of our lives.  As you can see, there are many more of us than have spoken to you.  We did not wish to overwhelm you with our memories.”

Cob looked to the shadowy crowd lingering among the trees and could not suppress a shudder.  The Guardian visions he had experienced so far had been bad enough, with their strangeness and shifting landscapes, their ancient vistas.  Being flooded by dozens or hundreds of them would have driven him mad.

“Fine, I understand that, but you could’ve told me.  We’ve been talkin’ for a fair amount of time now.  You knew my plans.  Why couldn’t you jus’ explain things better?”

“
We say what we can,” said Jeronek.  “Some things you are not ready to hear.”

That irked him, but he swallowed it down and just nodded, still glowering.  His father had stayed silent throughout this discussion, and when Cob fixed on him, he looked back with such stolid lack of expression that Cob felt he was not even being seen.  That put his hackles up in a heart-pained way, and as much as he wanted to yell at Dernyel for not controlling the others, for not taking his side, he could not form the words.  He could not bear to hear his father deny him.

Perhaps it would be best if they both stayed silent.

“
So you wanna follow Lerien,” he said to the others.  At their nods, he went on, “We do this my way, or I’m gonna stop in my tracks and not budge ‘til I pikin’ freeze to death.  I don’t take kindly to your manipulations, and if you try to turn me against any of my friends again—Arik, Ilshenrir, even Dasira—we’re done.  You understand?”

Erosei looked disgusted, but the others nodded, even Dernyel.  Cob returned the motion curtly.  “Good.  Now pike off.  I don’t wanna talk to you anymore.”

And just like that, the forest stood empty before him.

He scrubbed the heel of his hand across his face, cursing mentally about the Guardian’s erratic ways.  Then a small hand tugged on his sleeve, and he looked down to meet Lerien’s wide eyes.

“You have to be careful,” said the boy.  “You already know they’re disobedient.  This just means they’ll be less obvious about it.”

“
The same goes for you,” Cob said, though not as curtly as he had intended.  It was hard to be angry at the pale child.  “No talkin’ against the Guardian, all right?  I know you’re on the Ravager’s side, and I don’t wanna hear it.”