“Even if it goes against the Regents?”
A smirk creased Ardent's lips, made crooked by her scar. “Especially so.”
Lark returned it. “Enforcer Ardent, I think I like you.”
*****
Cob rose from a dream of mirrors and dark water to the blink of light against his eyelids. He cracked them open just marginally, puzzled by the purplish flash. It came from some object just out of reach, among the pile of gear Enkhaelen had portaled in; the necromancer himself was not in evidence, bedroll disordered and empty.
Grimacing, Cob pushed up on his good elbow and brushed at the glimmer of air-serpent wings. Its steady presence was all that had let him sleep, the air too thin in here to prevent a relapse of mountain sickness. His spirit-fingers made contact with it and it shivered, making him cough.
“Ah, sorry,” he told it in a sluggish rasp. It gave no response.
He looked around slowly, but this small geode was empty, the silver wall-coils hanging loose around their captured crystals. Ambient light filtered in from the next chamber, along with the steady click of Muriae feet, but he heard no voices—no indication that something was going on.
Exhaling heavily, he rubbed at his eyes with the heel of his good hand. He still didn't feel rested, but he couldn't go back to sleep now. The object was still blinking. With a sound of aggravation, he picked it up: a wide bracelet studded with cabochon stones, each the size of his thumbnail. The active one looked like an amethyst, radiance fluxing through it in a regular pulse that he could feel through the metal.
He poked it experimentally, but nothing happened.
“Piking mage-work,” he mumbled, and squinted toward the next chamber again. No sign of Enkhaelen. He had no desire to be the necromancer's errand-boy, so started to pitch the bracelet back among his things—then thought of Arik, still out there with those portal-stakes.
Reluctance eradicated, he pushed to his feet, grimacing at the aches in his back. Muriae hospitality wasn't much to speak of, and the bedrolls could only cushion the hewn-stone floor so well. He took a moment to stretch, then shuffled out from their little room—just one of many hollow geodes embedded in the walls of a much larger chamber. A short staircase ran down to the main floor, populated spottily by clusters of Muriae, but he chose to follow one of the wall-clinging walkways instead.
He knew where Enkhaelen would be.
He was halfway through a linking passageway when his feet started to ache. He hadn't put boots on, even though Enkhaelen had found him some; he wanted to rebuild his calluses. But the stone floor was unforgiving, and by the time he reached the grand hall he was hobbling and sweating, a litany of aggravations playing in his mind.
Just past the tunnel-mouth, he paused. Ahead lay a dozen yards of unclear ground, thick silver cables coiling and stretching along it like slow infinite snakes, and then the wide empty circle by the goddess-face. As expected, Enkhaelen was there, staring up at the face in silence.
Cob knew better than to call out, so just pushed off from the crystal wall and picked his way across the cable-strewn floor. Electricity prickled the soles of his feet and raised the hairs on his legs, sending static along the rough weave of his breeches, but as long as he didn't step directly on a wire, he figured he'd be fine.
If Enkhaelen heard him coming, he didn't show it: that shaggy head never turned from its contemplations, nor did the shoulders shift beneath the heavy black robe. He'd taken a belt and sheath from his stash, so now the bone-hilted sword hung at his hip with the same aura of threat as an akarriden blade, but other than that he'd made no attempt to smarten his attire. He looked as disarrayed as Cob felt.
Cob halted a few paces behind him and cleared his throat. They hadn't spoken much since the scry-meeting—had rather avoided each other.
Enkhaelen turned sharply, as if startled. Sleeplessness had painted shadows under his eyes, but the irises were bright blue-white like the sparks from the wires. They flickered from his face to the blinking bracelet, then the necromancer reached for it. Cob ceded it easily.
“Snowfoot again,” Enkhaelen said, popping Cob's hopeful bubble. He jammed a hand into his robe-pocket, mumbled something under his breath, then pulled free a small hand-mirror. Tapping the bracelet to it made a film of magic spin across the silvered surface.
Cob watched as the necromancer first waited, then prodded at it, but no image resolved. “Pikery,” Enkhaelen muttered at last, giving it a shake that fractured the magic and set it spilling back into his hand. “This is the third time she's tried to contact me only to duck behind some sort of block. When did this start?”
Cob shrugged. “Dunno. Was sleepin'. If you're tryin' to catch her, why not keep the bracelet with you?”
“That's not how I work, Cob. I don't wait on people. They wait on me.”
He rolled his eyes. “Sure. How long y'been out here?”
Enkhaelen regarded him, then turned to stare up at the goddess-face. Cob followed his gaze, not surprised that he didn't have an answer. He'd been privy to the man's memories and the body in the crystal bier, and couldn't deny that the silver features looked much like Yesai Miun's—Jessamyn's. Why he'd torture himself like this, though…
“She won't answer me,” Enkhaelen snapped as if reading his thoughts. “None of them will, but I don't care about those others. Her, though… If Jess is anywhere, it's in her; if she could speak with any mouth, it's this one. But she doesn't. Her eyes won't open no matter what I say. I can yell, I can plead, I can threaten...apologize...but nothing, nothing!”
Cob looked away, uneasy. He hadn't told Enkhaelen how she'd watched him during that strange trial, and didn't want to now, not with the tone he'd taken. He was bad news on a subdued day, but since channeling the Metal Seal he'd been twitchy, sharp, erratic. Cob didn't think the knowledge would ease his mood.
“How 'bout Arik?” he asked, as much to divert Enkhaelen as to know.
The necromancer shook his head. “If he'd set the stakes, I'd feel it in the bracelet. I should have stuck him with another splinter, or given him a scry-tag. Unless you kept a tuft of fur?”
Cob shook his head, then looked down at his clothes for stray hairs. “Sure there's somethin' on us. He's rolled on all my stuff a couple times before. ...'Cept Snowfoot gave me new stuff.”
“You can pick over everything if you like, but I think we should just go.”
“Without him? Where?”
Enkhaelen gestured wildly at the crystal walls. “Out. Toward Jernizan. We've been here long enough. I've refilled my reservoir and reset my wards, so I can tolerate the dark and cold for a while. If we take off from the lip of the Spire, we should be able to glide right out of the mountains and pike the trails.”
Cob's stomach sank. “Glide?”
Enkhaelen bared his teeth in a grin. “I do have wings.”
“But—“
“Don't you trust me?”
“No!”
That earned a laugh, the necromancer's eyes sparkling dangerously. “Good! You shouldn't. If I ever tell you to, just run away. But this time, it's fine. I know what I'm doing. And I'm tired of this place—this waiting. I want out. I can leave stakes with you if you insist on staying.”
Cob opened his mouth, wanting to say many things: you're crazy, just leave me, you're on your own. But he didn't want to be here any more than Enkhaelen did, and he was sick of trekking through the ruins of his parents' lives. Enkhaelen might be an uncontrollable maniac, but at least he had a plan.
“I don't like it, but fine,” he said quickly, not wanting to lose his nerve. “We try gliding, but Light help me, if you pass out in mid-flight...”
“Then what?” said Enkhaelen. “What will you do, hm?”
“Die. And you probably won't, so I'll have to haunt you.”
“Oh no, the endless gloom.” Bright-eyed, Enkhaelen nabbed Cob by the elbow and started towing him along. “Come on, then. Let's go jump off a mountain.”
With a sigh, Cob followed.
*****
Ardent watched as the pyres were lit, the flames backlighting the bodies for a few moments before the shrouds themselves kindled. From the fringes of the pit, Presh and Lahngi and several Gejaran mages reached out to awaken fire elementals within the pyres, and soon the whole of that dark space roiled with heat and light, sparks and wings and radiant scales.
Some of her agents burned there, laid to rest beside their unexpected allies. The survivors had been reclaimed by the Office of Enforcement, to be distributed where it thought they were needed. At least Ticuo and Zhahri were still here, though they answered to her mother now. They might slip her a tidbit or two.
Even if they did, there wasn't much she could do. She'd been officially reprimanded for calling that last Dark bite, for 'disrupting the Realm'—for getting too close to Blaze Company. She hadn't exaggerated anything she'd told Lark. The Regency had always been isolationist, had always put pressure on its mortal-realm branches to withdraw at any sign of danger. Pikes, she'd been sent to Bahlaer to evaluate whether that was necessary.
Not to kick off a war.
She wanted one now. She wanted blood—Rackmar's blood, and that of all his spies and saboteurs and wraiths. It didn't matter that wraiths didn't even have blood; she wanted to see them broken.
She watched the fires until they rose to such brightness that she felt her scar start to bleach, then turned away to gaze upon the small memorial beside her. It wasn't much: just a table with a red cloth flung over it and two candles at the back corners, casting light across the glimmering shards of what had once been the captain. His men had retrieved them when the eiyets wouldn't—an oddity, since they normally loved anything that glittered or shone.
They'd found his earhook in a toybox in an abandoned house. Ardent wore it now, because it was the master version that overrode the others. Her own, she'd given to Zhahri. She'd thought the Blaze officers would object, but none had made a peep; she hadn't even needed to wave the captaincy-writ at them.
She hadn't told her mother yet. Wasn't sure she would. Sarovy had left his men in her hands, so what did that make her? Shadow Folk? Blaze Company?
Whatever it was, she'd fight for them.
As for the captain, it was dismal looking over his remains. Despite their glassy composition, some still held a human shape: here a leg, almost whole; there a portion of an arm; there a hand, the fingers melted like wax. Other parts had been smashed beyond recognition, the larger pieces revealing strange inclusions: bone shards, flecks of metal, teeth. His men had tried to put him back together as if laying down, but there was no head, no upper torso. It was as if he'd disintegrated from the top down.
Among the shards lay his pendant, its delicate wings bent and its crystal smashed, and his broken sword.
She touched the former lightly and felt the crystal's pieces shift in their setting. For a moment she thought of picking it up, wrapping it in a handkerchief and tucking it away as a memento. But it wasn't his, not really; it had been imposed upon him to hide the damage and keep the ghosts in check. She thought he'd have freed himself of it if he could.
Instead, she lifted the broken sword to examine it. Blood had dried on one edge, coaxing a thin smile from her. He'd gotten a cut in after all.
She could use that. Blood-magic wasn't taboo everywhere, and she had her contacts.
The smile ebbed as she turned her gaze to the eagle-headed hilt. In the candle-light, there seemed something different about it—something changed since she'd returned it to him. She tilted it this way and that, trying to figure out the difference. Perhaps she'd imagined it. After all, it wasn't like she'd made a study of it. She just had a feeling—
She blinked.
The eyes. The eagle's eyes were blank.
Maybe they just weren't detailed, she told herself—but no, she remembered the tiny divots of its pupils. They were gone now, the eye-circles solid and sightless. Dead.
Her eyes prickled, a weight lodging in her chest. It was ridiculous. She'd respected him, but she'd barely known him. Tried to help him but hadn't been tied to him in any way.
Except that was wrong. She'd adopted his idea, his mission. She'd adopted his people too, now, no matter what the Regency said. She'd find a way to save them from her mother, and then…
She'd finish what he started.
Bridge
Firkad Sarovy opened his eyes.
All around him was mist, the sky obscured, the ground a flat textureless plane. No sound reached his ears; no scent flavored the unstirring air.
He frowned, trying to remember how he had gotten here. He had been in Bahlaer, hunting the Field Marshal, and then—
Fear made him reach to his throat for the pendant. Gone—but there was fabric under his fingers. He didn't remember that.
Looking down, he found himself clad in white, with the Imperial insignia embroidered broadly on the chest of his uniform jacket. Except on second glance, it wasn't the Empire's six-winged-light at all: it was a proper two-winged bird of prey, perhaps an eagle, picked out in black and silver and bearing a golden sun-sphere. Nor was the fabric quite white, but the color of soft sunlight.
He traced the sun-sphere thoughtfully, then followed the line of this new uniform to the sword that hung at his hip. Only the hilt was visible through the mist that swathed his legs, but that was enough to identify it. He could not possibly forget the Sarovingian blade.
As he reached to draw it, the eagle-head at the pommel blinked.
He hesitated, staring as it slowly turned itself to regard him. Its beak opened, allowing a glimpse of a tiny steel tongue within; its etched eyes tracked his.
“Firkad,” it said in a voice like wire and wind. “Fifteenth of your line. Senket's child. Seeker of the Sun.”
Sarovy opened his mouth but couldn't formulate an intelligent question, so just said, “Yes.”
“Senket does not release his children easily, but for the Sun, he makes allowances. You have strayed too far from the nest for him to aid you, but fortunately you have me. Step forth and carve your path.”
Sarovy blinked, then nodded and closed his hand carefully around the hilt. Though it still looked like metal, he could feel a heartbeat beneath his palm, bird-rapid, and when he drew it, he found the blade whole.
For a moment, he considered the mist, then cut a shape in it like a door. Greyness swirled aside from the blade, the trapped portion dissipating to reveal a street beyond. Bahlaer, he thought, but it wasn't as he remembered: the sky not dark but a roil of soap-bubble colors, the ground crawling with moss and vines. No pavings, no people, and only smoky impressions of buildings, so faint he could almost see through them. To the east, the fluxing rainbow sky was lighter, like a presage of dawn.
He took a breath of the air that trickled through the doorway, tasting ice and salt and blood, a hint of burning—but also flowers. Fresh new life, dreaming of the sun, awaiting spring.
“The Spirit Realm,” said his sword. “A treacherous place for human souls.“
“So I am dead.” It wasn't a question—nor was it a surprise. A relief, maybe.
“You have been dead a long time, Firkad. You were just trapped. Now you are free.”
Sarovy considered that. He did feel as if a burden had been lifted, and the voices of his fellow captive souls were gone. He was alone again. Was that freedom?
No. Not yet. Not until my work is done.
A faint smile touched his lips. Into the Spirit Realm, then. Danger didn't matter. Sacrifices didn't matter. He'd been given this last chance, and he wouldn't squander it on hesitation.
Gaze pinned to the light in the east, Sarovy crossed the threshold.
Extras
Powers:
Breana the Sword Maiden, Lady of Fervor, youngest of the Trifold Goddess.
Brigydde the Hearth Mother, Lady of Shelter, middle and original of the Trifold.
Brancir the Forge Matron, Lady of Shaping, eldest of the Trifold. Also Silver Primordial.
Loahravi the B
lood Goddess, Lady of Frenzy. 'Mother' of Daenivar and Rhehevrok.
Nemesis of Assassins, Lady of Seeking. Formerly the goddess of knowledge.
Lady Ruin.
Andar, the Sun Father.
Kherus Morgwi, the Shadow Lord.
Rule of Law, deceased.
Daenivar of Nightmares, once haelhene, consumed and reshaped by the Blood Goddess.
Iroliyale the Traveler, a shard of Andar the Sun Father.
Moon-Shadow, the Shade Mother. Served by Tatska the Night Wind.
Rhehevrok of Massacres, once ogre, consumed and reshaped by the Blood Goddess.
The Risen Phoenix Light, patron of the empire of the same name. Banished.
Surou the Dreamer.
Death Herself.
The Dark, essence of solidity and physicality. Desires silence and stillness.
The Void, essence of emptiness and unmaking.
The Guardian, Aesangat, spirit of prey and ally of the dark elements.
The Ravager, Aekarlis, spirit of predators and ally of the light elements. Mostly.
Athalarr the Lion, spirit and proto-deity of Jernizan, courting Brigydde.
Daxfora the Fox.
Kingara the Goblin.
Raun the Wolf.
Senket the Eagle.
Zolvin T'okiel the Crow.
Organizations:
The Crimson Claw, third of the Imperial Armies. Previously led by Crown Prince Kelturin; now under the command of Field Marshal Rackmar. Out of control.
The Golden Wing, second of the Imperial Armies. Broken.
The Imperial Inquisition, an order of mentalist mindwashers and spies. Repurposed and withdrawn.
The Sapphire Eye, first of the Imperial Armies. Divided and withdrawn.
The Senivaten, ruling council of Gejara, seated in the city of Gernaaken. Wary.
The Drowning Dark (The War of Memory Cycle Book 4) Page 91