The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) (92 page)

“
This one—ladies,” the Field Marshal snapped, gesturing to the little girl, and the lagalaina stepped forward to separate her from Sergeant Benson.  The sergeant’s face was stiff, but his eyes sought Sarovy’s, full of questions.

“
This one is young enough to be taught,” the Field Marshal said as if in answer, “and so she will stay here in our care.  The others, as with all the deluded souls you have harvested from those Dark dens, will be sent to the Palace to see the error of their ways.  They will aid us in destroying that malicious Dark spirit and thus redeem themselves.  You should be proud of yourself, captain, for sending so many of these misguided wretches to the Light.”

“
Yes sir,” said Sarovy automatically.  It felt nostalgic to hear such fervent ranting after so many years in the near-secular Crimson, but at this moment he could not call it a good nostalgia.  Ammala trembled under his hands, and in the periphery of his vision he saw the little boy clench his fists, saw the elder girl’s face streaked with tears.  The old lady struggled in Lieutenant Linciard’s grip, hissing foul things under her breath, but the big Wynd kept her under control even though his expression showed unease.

Too much of it.  The White Flames watched them all, eyeless helms turning slowly to take in even the men by the horses, and though Sarovy was not happy with this—with turning over a grieving mother, a citizen through her dead son, to the authority determined to punish her for aiding his slayer—his first duty was to his men.

By the Field Marshal’s words, a purge was imminent within the army as well as outside it.

“
Your task here is complete,” said the Field Marshal, and gestured his White Flames forward.  “Discharge your prisoners to us and we shall continue.”

“
There was one more thing, sir.”

The Field Marshal regarded him, and he took pains to sound neutral, dispassionate.  “The elder daughter.  My Scryer informs me that she has a latent mentalist talent.  By the agreement we have with the Silent Circle, that means she should be handed over to—“

“That will not be necessary, captain.”

“
Sir?”

A smile creased the Field Marshal’s features, bereft of humor or warmth.  “The Silent Circle collects mentalists because they are naturally-occurring and would be a danger if left untrained.  But there is no chance of such danger with my plan.  Therefore I deny your petition.  Give them over.”

Sarovy could almost feel Scryer Mako's glare, but there was nothing to be done about it.  Orders were orders.

All eyes on him, he said, “Yes sir,” and gestured his men to surrender their captives.

Ammala glanced back at him once before she was led away, and that look struck him profoundly: no accusation, no pleading, only deep yet unsurprised disappointment.  It was hard to admit that he felt it too.

“
Come along, captain.  We should speak,” said the Field Marshal as the White Flames took custody of the others.  He turned toward the tavern and Sarovy signaled his men to return to their horses before moving to shadow the commander, behind and to one side.

“
Now, I have heard interesting things about you and your new Blaze Company, captain,” said the Field Marshal as he strode a course parallel to the tavern’s porch.  Sarovy noted again the White Flame guards and the mages stationed at intervals along the street, almost as far as the eye could see.  More White Flames fell into step around him and the commander as they moved.  “You have been assigned to integrating the ‘specialist’ troops with the common men, yes?”

“
Yes sir.”

“
And has that gone well?”

“
Yes sir.  We have had minimal internal disputes and are becoming more effective as I learn what we can and cannot do.”

“
You are in exile from the Sapphire Eye, is that correct?”

“
Yes sir.”

“
Why do you think the former Crimson General chose you for this command?”

“
Sir, I do not know,” said Sarovy honestly.  “He gave me no reason and little choice.”

“
Yet you enjoy this command?”

“
It is an interesting puzzle, sir.  Trying to discern where each piece will fit best.”

“
Ah, I see.  A puzzle-solver.”  The Field Marshal’s voice went flat.  “I hope you’ve managed to fit them, then, because I will not accept a failure like the one you experienced here.”  He gestured to the tavern.

Sarovy grimaced, remembering the shadow-monsters and metal statues below.  “I will not fail you, sir.”

“Good.  Because you can be easily replaced, captain, by men far more suited to the post.  Men with a firm grip on my plans for the Heretic West.  I will give you an example of them now, Captain Sarovy, so that you might understand my expectations for you and your company, and for the Crimson Claw as a whole.”

With that, the Field Marshal raised his gauntleted hand and made a fist.  All along the block, the White Flame soldiers did the same, and the mages at their positions began weaving a spell.

Sarovy scanned the shop-fronts and upper apartments of this part of the Shadowland, remembering coming here under Magus Voorkei’s invisibility-veil.  The street had been quiet with evening drawing down, but then as now, he saw shutters cracked and knew that many eyes watched them—the same eyes that had watched from porches and balconies after the tumult of the tavern raid.  The same people who had shouted obscenities and thrown rocks only to skitter away when the Crimsons turned toward them.

The people of Bahlaer were both warier and less unruly than those of Fellen.  What could have become a riot had instead remained an ugly murmur in the dark.  But from that encounter, he knew that families dwelled in the apartments, not just Shadow Cult goons.  Old people with black-streaked faces did not seem much different from old people anywhere; small children with too-dark eyes were nevertheless small children.

So when a fissure of red light formed near the curb in front of the tavern and began to reach out in both directions, an awful feeling uncoiled in his chest.

It spread swiftly, a border being drawn by a massive invisible pen.  The shaping hands of the mages guided it along the street and to the corners, and he saw it turn sharply in the distance and realized that there were mages and White Flame guards on the side-streets—and perhaps down the backside of the block.  As he watched, the nearer parts gaped wider, etching the cobbled streets as if trying to sever this part of the Shadowland from the rest.

In upstairs windows, curtains twitched.  Shutters shifted.  Down the street, he heard the unmistakable click of a crossbow and flinched at a ruddy flash—a section of a ward that sprang into visibility above the fissure.  On his ear, the silver hook started to hiss and jitter, and he pulled it off and saw Houndmaster Vrallek do the same.

A red wall rose suddenly from the fissure, translucent and sheer, stretching up past the angled roofs of the homes and shops.  It turned horizontal at the top to spread and link with the other walls until it seemed that this whole Shadowland section had been placed in a box.

From within the box and from the opposite side of the street, the doors started opening.  Shadow Cultists stepped onto the porch of the tavern, gawking over their drawn weapons, and in the upper windows Sarovy saw small faces peeking out.

The crawling red ceiling joined into a single flat pane, and then, with a roar of compressing air, it crushed downward.

Shutters blew out, curtains shooting forward like flags as the red hand of the Crimson magi pressed in.  Wooden roofs crunched down flat then collapsed through ceilings, brick walls buckled, mosaics exploded into scatters of tile that rebounded off the barrier in a torrent of sparks.  The sound of shattering masonry assaulted Sarovy’s ears and he stepped back, covering them, but even that roaring and tearing noise could not blot out the others.

The screams.

The red hand thrust down, down, down, and the top floors flattened beneath it.  Inside the red line, the cobbled street started to buckle.  Some of the men outside the tavern stood frozen, staring up at the awful destruction, while others hurled themselves at the barrier or back into the building as if it could save them.  But nothing passed through the wall: not Shadow Folk, not flying debris, not dust.

The lower walls cracked with a sound like thunder, and suddenly the whole block tilted as the cellars and passageways below it collapsed.  The buildings dropped in a jerk, several yards at once and then a few feet, a few more, the cobbles popping up wildly as the street beneath them shattered.  The screech of stone and splintering wood, of metal girders hidden somewhere below, of smuggled goods and semi-honest livelihoods and people—

With a last titanic crash, the red hand pressed down to street-level, and it was over.

Sarovy withdrew his nerveless hands from his ears, staring across the red pane to the exposed city block opposite him.  More mages stood on that side, and more White Flame soldiers as expected, and from the buildings beyond them he saw Shadow Folk gaping in abject horror.  No sound came from the ruins below but for the faint creak and crash of broken buildings further crumbling.  Everything within the red rim of the mages’ spell was gone.

In the sudden silence, Sarovy heard Houndmaster Vrallek’s rough laughter all too well.

Then came the snap of a bowstring, the sudden whistle of a crossbow bolt.  The flash of a ward.  And suddenly all was chaos—shouts and screams of rage, the rasp of steel being drawn, the pale rush of the White Flame soldiers entering the fray.  Sarovy saw the Field Marshal turn from surveying the wreckage, his grin white as bone in the dark forest of his beard, his eyes gleaming with reflected red light.

“Destroy all who stand against us!” he roared to the troops, and Sarovy twitched, hand falling to his sword automatically.  The Field Marshal strode past him, fevered gaze feasting on the sudden riot, but Sarovy found that he could not turn.

He could not move at all.  The crushed buildings were almost obscured by the dust in the red magic box, but in those swirls of debris and blooming smoke, he saw the future.

Something small glinted by his boot.  He lowered his gaze, feeling as if he moved and thought through slow sap, and saw that it was a marble, or perhaps a bead.  Smooth and shiny.

Slowly, amid the screams and the flick of bolts and the clash of swords, he stooped to pick it up.  It was nothing special: a piece of black glass wrapped in a twist of wire, too misshapen to be pretty.  A cast-off.  A reject, left behind.

Without quite thinking, he curled it into his fist, then tucked it in a pouch on his uniform belt.

Then he drew his sword and turned to lead his men.

Geraad hesitated in the doorway to the laboratory, not sure why he had come.  Not sure why he had not fled as soon as Enkhaelen had released him from the inhibiting collar.  He had left Rian still huddled under the bed in the tiny chamber they had been allotted; he almost envied the goblin the ability to be so small and so hidden.

At a slab six in and three over, the necromancer glanced up from his work and said, “Ah, Iskaen.  I see you’ve finally had the guts to come visit.

“Guts, you get it?” he continued when Geraad just stared.  “Because Iskaen is the old word for innards, entrails…  A good sausage-maker’s name…  Perhaps you didn’t know that.”

“
No,” said Geraad faintly.

“
Well, come in.  We don’t want to refrigerate the whole volcano.”

Geraad took one hesitant step inside and flinched as obsidian shards irised shut behind him, sealing him in.  Enkhaelen had already returned his attention to his work, which seemed split between the body on the table and the small mirror propped nearby.  Now and then he would glance up from his scalpel to run a finger along the mirror as if caressing something within.

“So, what is it you need, my gutsy young friend?” he said, not bothering to look up.

Geraad forced himself to step between the first row of slabs, fiercely not looking at the corpses to either side.  “I—  I need to know why I’m here.  You captured me—“

“Saved you.”

“
Yes, ah, that.  And I’m grateful, please believe me.  But—“

“
I told you I wanted nothing from you.  Yet.”

“
Then what am I to do?” said Geraad, ashamed of the plea in his tone but unable to control it.  “This place is…fantastic in its way, but—“

“
Also terrifying and full of monstrous strangers.”

“
No, no, I wouldn’t—“

“
Iskaen,” said Enkhaelen firmly, setting down his scalpel.  “I made this place.  I know what it is.  You needn’t tiptoe around me; I haven’t lost so much perspective that I’ll snap at criticism.  Which reminds me: how are your hands?”

Geraad looked down at them, curling his fingers slowly.  He had not felt a whisper of pain since their repair, yet he almost wished he had.  Perfect as they were now, they seemed like a tainted gift, and in his most trapped moments he sometimes thought wildly about cutting them off.  As if that could somehow cast Enkhaelen’s magic back in his face and make this all go away.

“They work well,” he said.

“
Come here.”

Resigned, he drifted past the rest of the slabs to join Enkhaelen at his.  The body the necromancer worked on lay face-down, stripped to the waist, but though he could not see its features, Geraad felt a jolt of familiarity; the build, the coloring, the hair length and style, the remaining clothes all matched what the necromancer wore right now.  Even the thick silver ring that gleamed on the corpse’s left hand mirrored the one on the necromancer’s.

The main difference was the stump where the right arm should be, and the large hole in its back which Enkhaelen was excavating with his scalpel.

“
This—  You—“

“
Yes, me,” said Enkhaelen, gesturing for Geraad to stand at his side.  “If you want a purpose, you can help me right now.”

Geraad stared into the hole, with its layers of skin and fat and muscle peeled away to show knobby vertebrae and a glint of something silvery buried within, and felt the bile creep up his throat.  No matter what Enkhaelen said, right now he felt no kinship toward his butcher ancestors.

“Not that,” said Enkhaelen, and pointed past him—then reached up to turn Geraad’s head manually when the mentalist could not stop staring.  Those cold fingers sent more of a shudder up Geraad’s spine than a bucket of ice, and he shied away.

Enkhaelen looked at him like he had three heads, then jabbed the scalpel at the mirror.  “Watch that, for pike’s sake.  I only have two eyes, and I need to get this out before my next lecture.”

Blinking, Geraad turned a jaundiced look to the mirror, and found in it not a reflection of the horrid laboratory but a snowy landscape.  The ground was canted, broken by boulders and trees, and a crowd of shabby figures moved in the distance.

“
Touch one of the branches and my spy will move to it,” Enkhaelen said as he turned his attention back to the corpse.  “Try to keep your distance, though.  I don’t want him to sense me.  I haven’t put much into that spy but it’s still possible.”

Baffled, Geraad tapped a branch in the mirror, and the image leapt and bobbed and swept in on the branch then came to a stop.  From this closer vantage, Geraad could see the crowd of travelers better, and his mouth went dry.  A familiar antlered figure...

“What is this?” he said.

“
Your friend Cob.  I want to make sure he won’t get himself eaten.  Only so much I can do, of course.  That boy seems determined to feed himself to every dire force in existence.”

For a moment Geraad considered taking control of whatever the mirror commanded and flying it straight into the crowd.  Alerting Cob to this surveillance, then turning against the necromancer.

But he would lose.  And probably not even die in the process.

The thought of being strapped down to one of these slabs while still alive—

He exhaled and flew the spy to another branch, not too near, not too far.

Many figures.  At least twelve humanoid, though sometimes it was hard to tell from the way they scrambled up the rocky incline, and a number of wolves that milled and dashed and jostled constantly, making it impossible to count them.  Up and up they went, and Geraad dutifully moved the spy to follow them, until at last he glimpsed a gap in the rock wall, half-natural and half-carved.

As they began to slip into its dark confines, Enkhaelen said, “Ah, here we are.”

Geraad glanced over to see a crystalline arrowhead in the necromancer’s hand, shreds of flesh still clinging to it.  Enkhaelen ran his thumb along the surface and it sparked deep within, then began to glow with a faint cold light.

Enkhaelen smiled flatly, the arrowhead’s radiance reflecting off his shallow blue eyes.  “They should know better than to leave me such openings.

“
I’ll have to educate them.”