The Drowning Dark (The War of Memory Cycle Book 4)

by H. Anthe Davis

  “This was long before the Light,” he continued. “Before we worshiped any god at all. The hilt… The eagle-head represents our people's ancestor and patron, Senket, whom some of our southern brethren still follow. I...called out to him when I died. I don't know why. I remember being dedicated to the Light back then, but maybe that was part of my conditioning, like I was conditioned to think of my pendant as my mother's.”

  He indicated his chest, and she nodded slowly, remembering the look on his face when she'd demanded it outside the burning garrison—and the one when he'd put it back on after a day's separation. His features reforming, voice returning from the silent clay he'd been.

  She remembered the crack in it too, seen through her own jeweler's loupe.

  “He came to me,” said Sarovy. “He strengthened me, enough to let me steal this body from the sarisigi that owned it. And then I forgot him. Was made to forget, perhaps, like I was made to forget my conversion, or the reason I was called to the Palace. They told me I'd been disobedient—that exile to the Crimson was my punishment. They told me my family had repudiated me.”

  She saw, now, how he looked when he was angry. No lines formed, no teeth showed; everything just went hard, from his eyes to the line of his shoulders and spine. It sent a little frisson up hers, a sympathetic thrill.

  “This was all I had left,” he finished.

  What could she say? She'd already apologized for everything that deserved it. The breaking of the blade was a shame, but she'd verified that nothing could be done. Maybe back in Trivestes there was a shaman-smith with the necessary skills, but that territory had always been impermeable to the Shadow Folk. The Trivesteans wanted nothing to do with them.

  His gaze flicked up to her then, the fury dissipating. “You,” he said. “Do you have a family?”

  She considered a flippant response—only every Kheri ever—but he'd just peeled off a bandage in front of her. Shown a wound, still raw and bloody. That kind of honesty deserved reciprocation.

  “I have associates,” she said. “Subordinates, superiors. I have a woman who calls herself my mother, and many others who say they are my aunts, but I rarely see them. I was not raised by them. My mother was already in the Regency when I was born, so I was given to nursemaids, tutors. I don't remember ever seeing her before I was seven, though I'm sure I did. Clearly I had a father, but all I know is he was Pajhrasthani, and I doubt my mother knows much more.”

  Sarovy stared at her, and for once she found it unsettling. She looked down at the papers as if for answers, and added, “I tested into the Enforcers at thirteen. It's my passion. I want us to be everywhere, to know everything—to keep maniacs like your Emperor from sowing their horrors in secret. To stop the wars and ensure fair access to resources, aid, prosperity. When people sleep easy, so do the shadows.”

  His expression turned thoughtful, and she braced for the usual questions: no partner? children? Instead, he said, “Your organization shares this desire?”

  “Piecemeal. We have factions like any other group. I'm not a joiner; I just do what I do, to the best of my ability, which I suppose is why I'm here.” She managed a smile, then added, “If I were clever, I'd be an Overseer, but I prefer to get my hands dirty. The Regency sent me because they know that. They've always bickered back and forth about how much we should involve ourselves in the world, how much we should spy or help or rescue—or fight. Some of us are terrified of using force. But sometimes it's necessary, lest we stand by and watch our work burn.”

  “You really don't fight much?”

  “I do, personally. I was in Savinnor and Fellen and several southern wars I doubt you'd know. Not always in uniform. Most of us, though, no. If we think serious trouble is coming, we hire mercenaries for the front line and place Enforcers around the high-value targets, Collectors around anything that might need to be spirited away. You fought Enforcers in the Merry Tom when you attacked us the first time. I wasn't there, but I heard about it.”

  He grimaced. “I see. And we are your mercenaries now.”

  “I'd dub you an Enforcer but you won't wear black and you can't come into the Realm.” It was a joke, sort of, but he gave her that tilt-headed stare and she felt the need to add, “Really. You've got the mettle for it. You're wasted in red.”

  His startled look told her she'd gone too far. Been too friendly. Sitting back, she forced her expression to cool and said, “Is there more, captain?”

  He hesitated, eyes gone inscrutable, then gathered the pieces of the sword and wrapping together and said, “If I think of anything, I will write it up for you.”

  “Good. If you're satisfied with this mission, we'll have another soon—and hopefully some better facilities for you all.”

  “Thank you.”

  “We might never have enough work to occupy all your men, so if you don't mind, we might assign some of them a sorting, cataloging or prepping task.”

  “I can recommend a few whom I would not send out to fight. Though I will not ask that of the prisoners, unless they consent to be hired.”

  “We're not running a slave-ring here, captain. That's perfectly fine.”

  “Then...” He stood instead of finishing, and she pushed to her feet as well. It irked her to have miscommunicated, like she'd held out her hand to shake while he tried to bow and she'd accidentally slapped his face. Usually when she put someone off, it was on purpose.

  “I'll be in touch,” she said, tapping the earhook.

  He blinked as if he'd forgotten she'd taken one. Perhaps he had.

  They stared for a moment, awkward, then she said, “Dismissed,” and waited for his face to tighten at the liberty. Instead his right brow twitched and he nodded, turning to let himself out.

  She watched the door swing shut, exhaled heavily, then sat back down to her paperwork.

  Chapter 11 – First and Final Offer

  From his chair at Enkhaelen's bedside, Cob watched the necromancer take cautious steps across the rug, bronze-handled cane tucked up under his arm. The Trifolders had worked on his legs extensively over the past three days, and the necromancer had done even more in the times between healings—not that he was supposed to, but no amount of admonishment would stop him. They'd brought the cane a few marks ago and told him to exercise lightly; by the determined look on his face, he was already plotting to be rid of it.

  Not quite yet though, as he stumbled and nearly failed to plant the end in time. Cob started to rise, but Enkhaelen shot him a look that put his hands up in automatic placation.

  “I'm fine,” Enkhaelen snapped. Since being put on indefinite bed-rest by his hated enemies, he had veered back and forth between sarcastic and foul-tempered, with only a few moments Cob would consider tolerable. Their guards bore the brunt of it, both the human ones and the voiceless effigies, and more than once Cob had been forced to step between an effigy and the bedridden, imprecation-spitting mage to prevent a disaster.

  He would have liked to smother Enkhaelen with a pillow himself, except that here in the stuffy warmth of the temple, a brazier always within arm's reach, the piker rarely slept.

  Ate, yes—hugely, anything they brought that was either animal-based or dried or sugared. He kept grazing out of the brazier too, popping hot coals in his mouth with such relish that Cob was almost tempted. Tea, though, was dirty water and not acceptable, nor were most vegetables; the priestesses kept trying but Cob had learned to confiscate and eat them himself lest Enkhaelen throw them at a guard again.

  In all, it had become routine. Arik, napping beside Cob's chair, cocked one ear when Enkhaelen cursed in frustration but didn't bother opening an eye; Cob himself just settled, watching the mage's slippered feet. The strength wasn't quite there, but at least he had balance.

  And he'd finally had his left hand mended. Cob had been there for that session, because Enkhaelen had demanded it—requiring, he said, a witness to the Trifold's hypocrisy about surgery even though they were perfectly willing to stab him in the legs.

&nb
sp; The acting Mother Matriarch had tried to explain that they, the priesthood, respected the sanctity of the body far too much to cut it open. Enkhaelen had retaliated with a tirade about medical necromancers and the priesthood's fear of being outdone. As the Matriarch earnestly tried to respond, he'd talked over her, riling all the guards in the room, before sliding a scalpel from his sleeve and stabbing himself repeatedly in the hand.

  “There,” he'd said calmly once pinned by Cob and Arik. “Now you have something to heal.”

  And they had, with Enkhaelen stopping them occasionally so he could dissect out the scar-tissue. From the stiff pallor of the Mother Matriarch's face, she'd found it grotesque, but she'd allowed it. He'd already opened his entire palm.

  That was just how Enkhaelen worked, Cob decided. Antagonistic and impulsive, mostly to his own detriment.

  So Cob had spent a lot of time away, especially when Enkhaelen was in bed sending lightning through his own legs. That was the only way he could describe it, and the mage's rictus grimace and muscle-spasms were not something he cared to watch. He'd had to leave Arik behind—someone had to watch the maniac—but Arik had told him it was all right, he was happy to nap. Enkhaelen rarely turned his tongue on the skinchanger anyway, so it wasn't like Cob was leaving him with a bigger mess than usual.

  In those interminable marks of solitude, Cob had wandered nearly the entire complex. There were some places he wasn't allowed to go—women's places—but otherwise the Trifolders just nodded as he passed. He'd found all the rooms he remembered from touring with Fiora, including the altar chamber where the Trifolders had tried to remove the Guardian from him, but there were so many more: armories and forges and playrooms and kitchens, shrines for other deities and spirits, an entire infirmary wing, an extensive chain of store-rooms, a library, workshops, visitor housing—and on and on and on, with no intrusion from the surface except the occasional staircase or vent that let down some cool air. Some wings had clearly been opened recently, brick fragments still sticking from the edges of torn-down walls; others, he supposed, had been hidden during his original visit by well-placed furniture or tapestries.

  More interestingly, from looking at the stone and woodwork, he'd come to the realization that each of these chambers was quartered from a larger one. His dim memory of the Guardian's visions told him that this place had belonged to ogres once, who could stand up to fifteen feet tall. No surprise then that their basements were built like vaults, or that the humans who had come afterward had portioned them out to be less cavernous.

  Either way, it seemed the Trifold complex might run under half the ruined city, ancient cellars and cold-rooms linked together in a colossal sheltering network. No wonder he'd smelled smoke long before they'd arrived at the entrance.

  And there weren't just Trifolders in the complex. Perhaps two thirds of the people he passed were Cantorin civilians—old folks, women with children, entire families—and they were still coming, new bewildered faces in the halls every time he roamed.

  Sometimes he saw Shadow Folk too, in the storerooms and kitchens or in consultation with priestesses. They always had handcarts, and with some observation he'd figured that they were delivering fresh foodstuffs and dry staples, then taking away crate after crate of preserved foods and cloth goods. To where, he didn't know, but the kitchens were constantly busy and the gathering-rooms were always full of people chatting while knitting or weaving. The yarn baskets somehow never emptied, and there was always someone changing out the candles and refilling the braziers.

  Eventually though, the bustle always became too much for him, forcing him back to the relative quiet of Enkhaelen's isolated room. Like now.

  With great dignity, Enkhaelen tucked the cane under his arm and tried another stretch of free-walking. He looked much better than when they'd arrived: fully washed, his color good, hair cut and tied back in a thick ponytail, nails trimmed into something vaguely civilized. Though still thin as a rail, his eyes weren't so hollow, and his cheeks looked more sharp than starved.

  If not for the brow-scar, Cob wouldn't have recognized him. Even with it, he could barely reconcile these dusty-colored features with the stark-white visage from his Guardian visions. Enkhaelen didn't really look like any of his corpse-bodies, and only marginally resembled his splinter-self, as if he had misremembered his own appearance. The extremes were gone—pale face less so, dark hair less so, blue eyes muted but still cool—and he seemed older somehow. Not ageless like before, just mature, as if he had been a sketch in charcoal but was now a man.

  Strange to see him like this, hobbling and cursing in a bed-robe slightly too big for him, a muscle standing out in his jaw.

  “Take another rest,” Cob told him, because asking never worked.

  Enkhaelen shot him a look, but angled toward the bed and managed to sit down on it rather than collapse. That was an improvement. “Another day,” he said. “Just one more and I'll be ready, and we can leave this stifling place.”

  “I thought you liked the heat.”

  “I don't mean that. I mean—“ He waved the cane at the door-curtain—and by extension, the guards outside, two effigies again. While none had attacked him since that first day, they were assigned as guards far more often than humans, and there were always some passing by in the hall or lingering in the empty rooms nearby. Cob had counted twenty or so on this lower level, while upstairs there were only a few.

  “Can't blame them.”

  Enkhaelen's expression went sly. “You really think I'm dangerous in this state?”

  “I'm not stupid.”

  "Mm. Debatable. After all, you're still here."

  Cob snorted. He'd gotten used to being baited, and though he still felt a wealth of hatred for the man, it didn't rise up as easily as it once had. He felt proud of that—like he'd grown, despite what it had cost him.

  Nor did Enkhaelen seem to mind not getting a reaction out of him. It was like they'd shared a joke, albeit at his expense. If this was how their association would be… Well, he'd tolerated worse.

  “How's your hand?” he said.

  Making a face, Enkhaelen held it up, the palm still swaddled in bandages. One by one he curled his fingers, the central two with obvious effort. “On the mend. Tendons are tight, but that's just atrophy. The wounds have healed.”

  “Y'can do magic with it?”

  “I could do magic with it before. Hadn't you noticed?” A superior little smirk settled on his lips, and Cob resigned himself to a lecture. “Flesh is just a conduit for the energy. My mind is what directs it. As long as I can point—“ Which he did, at Cob. “—I can send a spell wherever I want. Technically I don't even have to do that, but it helps.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I am an animal at base. I see with my eyes, I hear with my ears, I touch things with my hands. When I want to see with my mind's eye, I turn my real ones in that direction by instinct. Magic came to us from the wraiths, who can extend their will without gestures, without glances, because they don't have hands or eyes unless they want to. We don't have that choice. And it is much easier to go with our instincts than against them.”

  “So y'could jus' look at somethin' and light it on fire?”

  “In theory. In practice, I have to extend the energy to it via my will, and then ignite it. Not quite instantaneous. Whereas when I use my hands, I flick a fragment of energy at it that ignites on contact. I can't yet do that with my eyes; they don't hold energy the same way.”

  “Because…?”

  “Because it's difficult to wrap my mind around. My great-grandfather could do it, but I suppose I'm not that flexible.” He shrugged lightly, then slid a hand under the edge of the mattress and pulled out a scalpel—another that he'd apparently liberated from his case while Cob wasn't looking. Ignoring Cob's scowl, he began to twiddle it between his mending fingers like a bladed form of coin-walking.

  “If you cut y'self, I'm gonna laugh at you,” Cob warned.

  Enkhaelen rolled his eyes. “And ho
w are you? Well fed, well rested, I hope. We have quite the trek ahead of us.”

  Into the heights of the Khaeleokiel Mountains, some two-hundred-plus miles straight uphill. Cob was getting tired of traveling. “I'm fine. Y'really think you're gonna manage with jus' one more day of healin'?”

  The necromancer waved off the concern with his scalpel-free hand. “Nothing will bring me back to full strength while we're in this permanent midnight. But I can stand, and I can walk a little. That will have to be enough. You didn't think you were free from carrying me, did you?”

  “Well, I hoped.”

  “Alas, no. Even if we did wait months for me to recuperate, I'd still pass out once it got too cold, so no point in delaying.” His last words were more weary than wry, and the scalpel stilled in his fingers. For a moment he just stared into space as if foreseeing a bleak future.

  Then he said, “Stop scratching your arm.”

  Cob blinked and looked down to where he had indeed been scratching. The sleeve was rucked up just enough to show the first of the dark streaks that had developed where Arik's teeth had torn him open—not quite scars, but certainly not bruises. He had half a dozen of them on his arm now, and while they didn't hurt when he prodded them, they occasionally gave a pang or a crawling sensation. Privately he feared it was the Dark in him, bleeding through.

  The black mark Erevard had left on him was still there, unchanged, so it wasn't that.

  “Jus' itches,” he said, drawing a peevish look from the necromancer. “It's fine, the Trifolders gave me a salve for it.”

  “You've been scratching that same place since we got here. Let me—“

  “No. Y'mended me enough. You need t' focus on fixin' y'self.”

  “Are you afraid I'll hurt you?”