The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) (64 page)

Lerien’s shoulders sagged, and Cob grimaced and reached out to ruffle the boy’s ragged hair.  He felt it under his fingers, coarse and windblown as if Lerien was really there, and the corners of his eyes stung.

Peeking up at him, Lerien gave a slight smile, then evaporated into a swirl of feathers and white light.  For a moment, the white ringhawk perched on his arm, its claws like tiny vises through his sleeve, then threw itself into the air to flit eastward.

He frowned after it, wondering why east instead of north to Daecia City.  But then Fiora tucked herself under his arm and looked up at him questioningly, and he sighed and pulled her close, following the white speck with his eyes.

*****

From his hiding place in the bushes, Arik could smell the dark female’s trepidation, a thin wary note within the wash of familiar scents.  She carried objects he vaguely recognized as his own—the artificial fur and false paws he wore when he was upright—as well as two leather humps on her back and a metal net and shell.  From the distortion of her face, she was not pleased to be doing this, and often shaded her eyes from the dimming sun as she approached.

Beyond her, the starfallen one stood by the thorn wall, as it had for nearly all the time since the Guardian passed through.  It was outside the trees now, and nodded to the dark female as she came close.  They exchanged noises that Arik supposed he should understand.

He had not felt Raun’s presence so keenly in a long time.  Even while the Guardian had been imprisoned in the singing crystal, he had been able to cope, for he had been running in pursuit of the flying things and then laying in wait, prepared to rend all that he could catch.  He had been focused, and that had served to smother the predatory instinct, the insistent ache of tooth and claw and quill.

Now, though, he could only wait—and he hated to wait.  The Guardian was nowhere he could reach, not even if he clawed with all his might at the thorn wall.  He followed the starfallen one because he knew it awaited the Guardian too, even though he would have liked to snap its neck with his teeth instead.

It stayed very still most of the time, which was fortunate.  If it ever moved quickly, he would have no choice but to attack it.

The starfallen one gestured the way the venomous female had gone, and they both gazed in that direction.  Arik did too.  He was wary of her.  Most humans were unpredictable and dangerous, their blended blood making them both predator and prey—capable of turning from one side to the other in an instant—but she was all predator.  He respected that, but it concerned him too.  After all, he was now a follower of the prey-spirit.

She had gone an uncertain while ago.  Time was hard to tell when he was in this shape.

The starfallen one withdrew from the thorn wall suddenly, rubbing its forearm as if stung.  Arik crept forward as it cleared a circle in the snow and knelt, withdrawing long shiny objects.  His heartbeat kicked up as he recognized them: the things that had made the door in the air that led to the singing crystal.

He did not know why they would go back to the singing crystal.  Perhaps the door would lead somewhere else today.

The dark female and the starfallen one had their backs to him, so he shimmied out of the bushes to approach them low through the broken snow.  From this vantage he found himself wanting to pounce them, half playful, half hungry, but he was old enough to know that the play would flee from his mood quickly if he did.  He could not remember many things in this state, but he remembered redness.  Red, red, red, and the screams of men and dogs.

But that had been long ago.

As he forced himself to lay down, the fine cold grains sifted into his belly-fur and made him shiver.  He was a wolf of northern stock, born for the tundra, but he had spent his early life in human shape and his fur had thinned so that he could better mimic men.  It made winter problematic if he did not think to fur himself out properly when he shifted.

That was how many wolves died.  They forgot how to be proper wolves, too weighted down by human lives.

The starfallen one set two of the shiny things in the frozen earth, than began weaving energy with its fingers.  Arik watched quietly, breathing slow frosty breaths.  With wolf-eyes, he could see the strands of magic in a way that his man-eyes could not—the way they accreted from the air and the snow and the ground, from the dark female and the hibernating plants, from the starfallen and from Arik himself.  The ambient essence of the spirit of the world, drawn into fine thread to be knitted into a new form.

He did not like it, but he knew that it was necessary.  It had saved the Guardian many times, though in other hands it had threatened him.  It was a bane to the world—or so he had been told by other skinchangers—but in the hands of the starfallen it seemed to sip only lightly.  Thus he reserved judgment.  Necessity was his alpha.

Slowly the door took shape in the empty air.  The dark female made noise again but the starfallen one did not respond.  Arik watched the magic closely, waiting for it to show the Guardian, for why else would they be doing such a thing?

And in a sudden flash, it did.

Arik sprang to his paws as the door-magic opened into a strange forest, the snow deeper, the trees tight-woven.  The Guardian stood there, his antlers just fading, his eyes returning to human, a look of conflict on his bent-nosed face as he put away a piece of crystal.  The hearth female had him by one hand and glanced between him and the doorway.

Tentatively, Arik edged forward, feeling the soothing shadow of the Guardian spirit already start to touch him.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” said the dark female, and Arik realized that he understood her again.  The animal confusion in his mind was fading.  “It’s piking cold out and I have a headache.  Cross over so we can get back in the house!”

“
It may not be so simple,” said the starfallen one.  “If the enemy in the north is preparing an assault…”

“
Well, I know, but—“

“
Come with me,” said the Guardian.

It was all Arik needed to hear.  Tail lifting, he moved straight between the dark female and the starfallen to the edge of the door, ignoring the dark female’s spluttered resistance.  With each step, the shadow fell further over him, driving away the tension and hunger that had weighed on him since the Guardian’s departure.

He barely hesitated at the threshold.  The crossing terrified him no more than being alone.  Padding carefully through, he shivered at the sense of disjunction then tucked himself bodily against the Guardian’s leg, and as a hand fell to his head, fingers digging into the thick fur behind his ears, he sighed a great satisfied sigh as every last fear fell away.

It was a deep, soul-filling contentment.  For a moment he felt Raun himself relax like a child beneath the calming touch of its parent.

But such peace could not last long, and after a moment Arik felt the predatory instinct return, though blunted.  It was like hearing noise from another room—distant and almost unintelligible, without impact.

“
Come now,” said the Guardian again, and Arik peeked around his leg, wondering how anyone could disobey.  The dark female still stood on the other side, her face showing discomfort and concern.

“
But Dasira—“ she said.

“
Dasira has business here,” said the starfallen one.  “She will join us if she can.”

Arik felt the frown in the Guardian’s mien, and tilted his head slightly, puzzled.  He had heard the starfallen one and the venomous female speaking earlier, but had not understood the sounds.  Still, he knew who she was.  It was strange that she would stay behind rather than follow her beloved one.

The dark female’s face echoed that question, but she looked toward the town and then nodded slowly.  “If it’s that important to leave now…”

“
Yeah,” said the Guardian.  “We have a long way to go.”

“
To where?”

“
To find the firebird.”

They all gave the Guardian curious looks now.  Arik sniffed his hand and sleeve.  He smelled of blood and earth and flowers and hearth female and sex and starfallen magic, but not of madness.  That was good.  Arik did not mind running through the snow if it was by the Guardian’s side.

“I’ll explain later,” he said.  “If we have enemies in the area, y’should all cross over now.  Here, put this on the wall for the Trifolders.”

He tossed something red and pulsing through the door.  The dark female caught it, then grimaced and scuttled out of sight.

“You are certain that you desire this?” said the starfallen one.

“
I have unfinished business that needs tendin'.”

“
Very well.”

“
Dasira’s really stayin' behind?”

“
She has not returned, though it has been some time.  I would say yes.”

“
She could be in trouble.”

“
I doubt that it is any trouble she can not handle.”

The Guardian sighed and scratched Arik’s ears absently, and Arik tried to will some calm back through the touch.  He did not like to see the Guardian sad or worried, though sometimes there was nothing he could do to soothe or distract him.

“You know you’re crazy, right?” said the dark female, stepping back into view and slinging the leather humps and the metal objects through the doorway.

“
Maybe,” said the Guardian.  “Doesn’t matter.  If you don’t wanna come, then don’t come.”

“
Oh, I’m coming.  But I won’t pretend I like it.”

The hearth female unslung her burden and grabbed the metal net the dark female had tossed through.  “Just let me change first, please?” she said.  “I swear I’m never taking my armor off again.”

“He’s the spirit of metal, you know,” said the Guardian.  The hearth female grimaced.

“
I hope your firebird is in a town,” said the dark female as she stepped reluctantly through.  “I didn’t get a chance to cash in this piking chit.”

“
Doubtful.”

The dark female sighed in resignation.

With a last look toward the town, the starfallen one stepped through the doorway, then crouched to pull up the shiny things.  In a ripple of escaping energies, the doorway evaporated into nothing.

They stood in the strange forest among the untrodden snow, the sky grey above them, the sun a flat coin veiled by clouds.  Even to Arik’s furred self, it was bitterly cold.

“Which way?” said the dark female, rubbing her arms through her sleeves.

The Guardian turned, gaze searching the tree-canopy as if looking for a bird among the branches.  For a moment he fixed on something, and Arik looked there too, but whatever it was, it was invisible even to wolf-eyes.

“East,” said the Guardian.

So east they ran.

Though Dasira was more used to riding thiolgriin than horses, she had never wanted to do so again.  Not only because it meant that she was tangled up with the Imperials, but because thiolgriin did not wear saddles, and their spines were hard and ridged.  For once, she was glad to not be a man.

Yet the discomfort of the run was outweighed by the knowledge that she was taking them far away from Cob.  They traveled swiftly through the deepening gloom, the largest thiolgriin running riderless in the lead to clear the path while the rest followed in their wake.  At the rear, the mages floated along like sledders, having strung strands of energy to the collars of several hounds and levitated themselves above the snowline.

The senvraka had been exuding his aura of command since the start, to keep the loping hounds together.  Its scent was different from Annia’s poisoned-honey aura—muskier and more animal, less like enticement and more like bullying.  It annoyed her, for though her bracer had shot her full of countering chemicals, her laundress’s body had quickened its pulse at the first whiff and even now she felt the need to glance at him occasionally.  Just gazing as he rode low over the back of his hound, Gold uniform cut close in all the right places.

At the back of her belt, Serindas throbbed its opinion as to what she should do.  As usual, she agreed.

She rode arched on her hound, legs aching from the effort of keeping knees and heels pressed tight to its chitinous sides, arms tensed as she gripped the creature’s collar in the absence of saddle or reins.  She had hooked her hands through the collar palm-up so that she could dig her elbows into its sides just below its shoulder blades, which helped her stay balanced as it maintained its long gait but meant she had to lean close to its neck and breathe in the stink of it.

At least she was near the front of the pack, not at the tail-end with the mages.  It made her smile to think that their easy, floating travel-style might not be as pleasant as they had expected.

Beside her, the senvraka watched ahead keenly.  He had introduced himself as Calett, and though he wore no sign of rank, he was obviously the leader.  In another skin, Dasira had spent time among the Gold abominations and knew that they were even more segregated from the human troops than the Crimsons were.  In their own parallel hierarchy, symbols of rank meant nothing; tooth and claw and control were all.

They had not spoken much.  It was not hard to do so on hound-back but he appeared to have no questions, no doubts about her.  He did not seem stupid, so that was worrying.

Up ahead, the lead hounds broke into a rough chorus of howls.

“
A trail,” said Calett.  “You were right, Hunter.”

Dasira’s stomach flipped.  Then her hound passed a section of churned-up snow and she caught the scent too.  Stag and stone.  Unmistakable.

How the pike did he end up here?
she thought furiously. 
And why is he headed east?  What’s going on?

Oh Light, the universe hates me.  Hates, hates, hates me.

It had been at least three marks since they had ridden out, and the sky had already darkened to slate.   Ahead, the trees made black stitchwork against the white ground, nothing visible past the lead hounds but more forest.  The jagged path of broken snow curved northeast, and so did they, the hounds picking up speed and trading yaps and yowls of excitement as they truly began the chase.

Frozen inside, Dasira tried to make a map in her mind.  On their right, to the south and falling away as they changed course, would be the barrier of Haaraka.  Ahead to the east was Trivestes and the Garnet Mountain Territory, but they were still far away.  The land here was gentle hills, and from the scarred bark of the older trees she knew that there were no towns between here and the Trivestean border; this was still the fire zone, the land scorched in order to drive the Amands into the northern cities.

Beside Turo and a few hermits, there were no people in the fire zone.  No place to shelter, no allies to call upon—not unless Cob crossed back into Haaraka.  Ahead of him, there would be nothing but the too-distant mountains and the antagonistic, staunchly Imperial Trivestean outposts, which would riddle him with arrows if he approached them too fast.

And Akarridi.

She closed her eyes, telling her heartbeat to calm and her fears to shut up so that she could think.  She knew this area; she had been one of the fire-setters, sent to create Akarridi by clearing the land of life so that it could exist.  Not a task that she had enjoyed, but an assignment from Enkhaelen with very specific orders.

To watch it, to report on it, to participate as deeply as possible.  Because it was the pet project of Enkhaelen’s bitter rival in the Imperial Court, the Lord Chancellor Jashel Caernahon.

She had seen them argue at court, Enkhaelen vitriolic, the Lord Chancellor coolly disdainful, and how it had never turned into a spell-duel—for they were both powerful magi—she did not know.  The accusations, insinuations, criticism, backhanded compliments and sneering pleasantries always seemed to devolve into Enkhaelen’s full-throated shrieking.

The only reason Dasira had been allowed to participate was that she was not officially Enkhaelen’s creature.  She belonged to the Empress’s retinue, for what little that meant, and had served the Crown Prince since his birth.  The seals on her assignment papers were all Crown Prince Kelturin’s, and though she was known to take Enkhaelen’s orders, it had begun only at Kelturin’s behest.  Thus, she had been allowed to claim Serindas during her time in Akarridi, and had gone back several times since.

It was difficult to forget the place.  The blood-soaked arena, the sacrificial slab, the ring of detention cells hardly large enough to lie down in.  The pleading and curses and disgusting propositions, the gleam of pain-maddened eyes and broken teeth.  The haelhene jailors in their expressionless masks and pristine robes, trailed by slave-gladiators marked for destruction.

And Serindas, back when he had still been a man.

For a moment she saw him again, bloody-faced and writhing not from the pain of his crippled body but from his unstoppable desire to lash out, to claw and bite and tear.  The spiderweb of burst capillaries in his eyes, the shattered cheekbones, the cracked spine, the pink froth on his mouth as she raised the ritual knife that would seal him to his vessel.

The first act of dominance over an akarriden blade was its moment of creation.

They would enter Akarridi’s territory soon.  It was not far north of the Haarakash barrier, and judging by Cob’s current trajectory, he would pass between the two foul places like a hare darting between rocks.  She did not know if he would sense it, if he would turn toward or away from it—with him, it was impossible to guess whether fear or rage would win.

Regardless, the Akarriden would know about him.  Word traveled fast among the haelhene.

Pike it, Cob
, she thought in a fury,
when I catch up with you, I will beat you until all the stupid falls out.  Please, please, please don’t act on it before then.

Tucking her chin to her chest and keeping her gaze up, Dasira squinted into the wind, plotting all her options as she and her foes sped along the broken trail.

*****

“
What was that?” Cob heard Lark say from the rear of the group.

He did not want to answer, because he knew.

Darilan, you traitor.

Many times he had heard those howls drift through the hot darkness of the Crimson camp.  Their belling harshness alerted all to the fact that a slave was loose where slaves should not be, and was soon to be torn apart.

He wanted to tell himself that it was his imagination, but that would be irresponsible—just like it had been irresponsible to let Dasira stay among them unchallenged once he realized who she was.  From the way she had been avoiding him since his awakening, it was obvious that she knew she was caught.  And now came the hounds to hunt him down, with her doubtless among them.

Ahead, the white ringhawk hovered among the trees, waiting for him to catch up.

Every instinct screamed that he had been lured from Turo and Haaraka into the jaws of an Imperial trap.  He stared ahead, sure at any moment that he would hear answering howls as his enemies converged.  All this running, struggling, bleeding, all the trust he had dared show to these disparate allies and former foes would be for nothing.  He would return to where he had started, a prisoner awaiting execution.

The Guardian stirred as if in answer.  It had raised his antlers earlier in the run and mended all his wounds, except for the spots on his shoulders where the Thorn’s gifts still throbbed.  Cob sensed that it could expel the thorns if it wanted to, but it seemed to recognize that they were marks of truce.

The rest of the work had been left to him, and he had managed to wrap himself in haphazard bark armor with a few loose pebbles—not the heavy stone he was used to, but not the meager mud he had worn in his dream training either.  Most of his attention had been on his companions, on their heartbeats and weariness, their aches and hangovers, and he had done his best to draw strength from the earth and spread it out among them.  Now the crusted snow broke before him as if from a ship’s prow, and his companions followed in a tight line, breathing as one, their footsteps falling in cadence: a gestalt, a herd, a single unit of life moving in harmony.

The howls broke the crystalline quiet again, and with great reluctance Cob reached out with his senses, still keeping up the pace.

There was life among the branches, in the bushes, under the snow.  He felt the small heartbeats of hibernating rodents and nesting birds, but nothing bigger than an average barn-cat.  Some yards to the south was the strange sensation of the Haarakash barrier, and in between Cob felt the network of roots and branches that made up the sleeping forest, content to wait for the warmth and light of spring.

Ahead, at the limit of his senses, something seemed off.

But it was the feeling from behind that held his attention.

Hearts.  Many of them.  Pounding in their own erratic rhythm, pumping poison through predator bodies and filling the woods with the reek of corrupted life.  Not wholly unnatural, not artificial, but twisted—tortured, dying but unable to stay dead.  Full of a vitriol that burned them as much as it would their victims.

Just sensing them made Cob feel dizzy with disgust.  His awareness of such things had been blunted before now, and the tormented aura of the pack bearing down on him was almost too much to stomach.

And they were faster.  They were gaining on him.

He clenched his teeth and ducked his head, aiming his antlers forward at some invisible enemy.  Reaching into the earth, he pulled more strength into his legs and through the connection to his herd, picking up the pace, his pack jouncing across his back as he set the new rhythm.

Another howl.  Fear like a flutter of displaced birds flashed up from his herd.  They were tough, he knew, and none of them were as prey-blooded as him, but no one enjoyed being hunted.

He tried to count the enemy, but beside Dasira’s gut-wrenching presence, they were too many to focus on.  Enough to know that they outnumbered his herd enough to pull them all down.  No option to stand and fight in his state—tired, still reeling from Haaraka, constantly bleeding support to the others.  There was only flight, until the hounds snapped at the stragglers’ heels and forced him as the stag to turn and defend.

He stared ahead, striding strong through the splitting snow, and tried to feel the shape of the land before him.  To think tactically, grasp for any choke-point that he could push his herd through and then hold against the pursuit.  But the forest stretched on, only the great arcs of old roots breaking up the trail.  And beyond these trees, beyond the span of sight—

To the northeast, the land was numb.

He stumbled briefly as he sensed it.  An arc of agitated earth and then dead emptiness, like a chancre in the world.  On reflex he cast his senses into the trees instead, and flinched to find them screaming in their slow soundless way, rotting from the roots up.  Like most here, their trunks were banded with fire-scars, but they were suppurating too—leaking their sap like lifeblood.  Down below the snow, below the frozen earth, he tasted poison in the water-table.  Oxidizing metal, filmy white fungus and black rot.

Instinct told him to turn south, but that was Haaraka.  It was too dangerous to bring the others close to the barrier.

He looked northeast and saw a vast lake through the trees.

Once, it must have been lovely.  Even now, with pristine snow upon its shore, it held some cold allure, like a pane of black glass set in a white lead frame.  Stumps and skeletons of dead trees littered its banks, and the ones that clung to life nevertheless leaned drunkenly, as if their roots had failed to hold them.  In a few spots, the burned husks of buildings protruded through winter’s cloak like rotten teeth.

Distant across the frozen expanse was an island like a grey jewel set untwinkling in its stark setting.  Squat buildings ringed its lower slopes, and its pinnacle looked scooped-out, like a puncture in the flesh of the land.  No trees clad it, nor did earth or even snow.  To Cob’s eye it looked like raw rock, cruel and unwelcoming.