Dasira sighed.
“He's... We haven't been as close. He doesn't want to talk, doesn't want to touch... Not since we came down from the mountains.”
“Good.” When the girl gave her a peevish look, she clarified, “Sand, salt, it's bad enough under your clothes.”
Fiora's face scrunched in horror. “Oh. Oh, right. But it's not just that. He hasn't kissed me. He barely even holds my hand.”
“Do you really think I want to talk about this with you?”
“Well, who else? Lark's never been with a man, and you've known him for so long...”
Dasira blinked. “She hasn't? Look, he's a private person, and we don't even have tents. He curls up with you; isn't that enough?”
“No, it's just—“
“Fiora. I don't care.”
“No, listen. He's not himself. Everything was fine until that last day in the mountains, but after that, he got strange. I think he's been having nightmares.”
Dasira bit off an automatic retort and narrowed her eyes. The last time she remembered him having nightmares was back when the Guardian started to break through his Imperial conditioning. As far as she knew, he now communed with the Guardian while he slept.
“How can you tell?” she said warily.
“Because he twitches awake and won't touch me, or let me touch him, and he looks at me like I'm someone else.” Her sigh fluttered the edge of the scarf. “And when we settle down together, he's so tense, like he's afraid of what will happen. I've asked but he just won't talk.”
Dasira grimaced. That certainly sounded like him. The only reason he had reported his Guardian dreams to Darilan was that he'd feared being tainted by the Dark and desperately needed someone to laugh it off. Now, it seemed he had no such impetus.
“Just leave him be,” she said. “Do you want him prying into all your secrets?”
“I have nothing to hide.”
“No? What about your tea?”
The girl's lips compressed, then she lifted her chin defiantly. “Nothing wrong with my tea. The Trifold sends all of its operatives out with herbal contraception; it's just practical.”
Dasira snorted. She'd figured as much, but it was nice to have verification. “So I shouldn't take that as an indication that you'd had designs on him?”
“What? Why would I? They sent me to protect him, not sleep with him.”
“So why did you?”
“Because I like him.”
“Not because he's the Guardian?”
“No. Honestly, we all thought the Guardian was supposed to be a girl.”
“Would you prefer that?”
“What?” she spluttered, cheeks crimson below her eye-guard. “No, no, he's fine how he is. And I'm sorry I asked about your, um, interests. It was rude of me. I just— I mean, it's not like we planned for the Guardian to show up on our doorstep. The Trifold hasn't had contact with any spirit beside Athalarr in ages. It was a surprise to everyone.”
Dasira said nothing, just kept an eye on the girl, whose expression suddenly went incredulous.
“You— You think I'm trying to trap him,” she said. “That I'm some kind of seductress.”
“I've known a few.”
“Do I look like one? Pikes, if we were trying that, I can think of two score of my sisters better for the job than me. You and I have a personal thing, and I shouldn't've brought Cob into it, but it wasn't because of...” She made an angry noise and waved dismissively with her free hand. “Just...pike that idea, all right? I like him and he...he seemed like he needed someone. He's been happier, hasn't he?”
Dasira looked away. She couldn't deny it.
“I'm just trying to say that something's wrong now, and I thought you should know, or maybe you had some advice. If not, we don't have to discuss it.”
“Good.”
“It's just that I—“
“Stop.”
Fiora fell silent, and together they fixed their attention on Cob's back and the unknown destination before them.
*****
In his mind's eye, murky water churned around his shins. The reek of brine and dying plant life filled his nostrils, and lumpy shapes floated among the tussocks, buoyed by the salinity of the fading sea. Reeds, rimed into blades by the salt, chattered and clacked together as the wind pushed through them.
“Why do we have to do this?” he muttered, uneasy. Below the vision, he could swear he felt the lurking Dark.
'It was like this in my time, though I never saw it,' said Erosei, wading beside him. His warrior's crest sagged in the phantom humidity, his bare arms sheened with sweat, the goat-hide vest and breeches marked black with murk. The scabbards of his twin swords rasped together against his back, just out of reach of the water. 'Right before Enkhaelen cracked the Seals.'
Cob ground his teeth. He had fallen into the Guardian state to distract himself from his dreams, only to find them echoed in this unsettling landscape. “So?”
'It was already shrinking,' said Vina from his other side. The dark-skinned ogress towered over the other Guardians, and moved through the thick water as if she had been made for it, showing no distaste. The snakes that coiled across her shoulders flicked their tongues to test the air. 'But his tampering with the Seals made it drain away in a rush, we know not where.'
“I know. Ilshenrir told us. I asked for your memories, not this.”
'You require context,' said Jeronek from behind. He sounded solemn, and Cob did not need to look back to know the tension that would be on his square face. He did not seem to like the water. Cob could sympathize. 'What you do in the Palace will reorder the world once again.'
“Isn't that the idea?”
Ahead, Haurah the skinchanger glanced back, her legs murked up to the thigh, chestnut hair stippled with spatters. A few drops marked her feral face. 'It's up to you, really. So you should know this.'
“I should know about your pikin' pasts,” he muttered. “I know you lied.”
'I never lied,' said Haurah, 'I just...didn't show you everything. And I am sorry for it, Ko Vrin. But we are merely here to support you. We are not important in ourselves.'
“Then why you, specifically? Why not them?” He waved toward the vast horde of shades that paralleled him through the ancient sea, more distant and less solid than the ones who guided him but still there. Still former Guardians. “I know why my— Why Dernyel is here. And the rest of you have shown me some interestin' things. But why not the others?”
'We are the strongest,' murmured Vina. 'We had the most impact upon the world at its most crucial points. You object to being shown the Sealing?'
“No, but y'only showed me flickers of it. Jeronek—“ Cob turned to face the trailing Guardians and made an effort to focus on the stone-armored Padrastan and not the man beside him. “Jeronek, you were there. You showed me the Pillar and the Ravager you knew, and the magic. But right after the Seal is placed, the memory stops. There's no...” He struggled to find the words, then sighed. “There's no reason for it to just stop.”
Jeronek looked away. 'The Guardian parted from me.'
“So y'don't know what happened?”
'I am the Guardian's piece of Jeronek. I can not see what it was not there to witness.'
Shaking his head, Cob turned forward again. He knew his real comrades were following at his heels but when he was in a Guardian fugue he could not see them, only sense them dimly through his contact with the ground. All his other senses dreamed. “I dunno,” he said, gazing across the dark water, “it jus' feels like I'm missin' somethin'. Maybe you're tryin' to protect me, but there could be details somewhere that would help.”
'We understand your concern,' said Vina, 'but we cannot mesh with you, and without that, there is no way for you to see our whole truth.'
“Still, there must be somethin' you can show me. I know you were Guardians for longer than those little glimpses. Erosei, you said Enkhaelen threw you off of Howling Spire, but then you only showed me that little bit on that
island. How long was the Guardian with you?”
The Kerrindrixi warrior snorted and slashed at the water with a broken reed. 'Months, but it was dull stuff, chasing the piker over land and sea. Worst time of my life.'
“Then show me the island. You fought him, right?”
'Looking for some tips, kid?'
“Might as well.”
'Then you're out of luck. There's nothing to see. We have power over water and earth, but he got there first and prepared the ground with his magics. I barely managed to draw my swords before he got me.'
“Then what does it matter if you show me?”
'Do you like reliving your mistakes? Oh wait, you must, because you keep making them.'
Cob gritted his teeth. Of all the Guardians, he liked Erosei the least, and to be shrugged off like that...
It occurred to him suddenly that he didn't have to play nice.
“Erosei,” he said coldly, striding toward him through the murk, “I'm not askin'. You lot may shoulder some of the danger but I'm the one who'll die if we fail, so you better get used to this.”
The Kerrindrixi sneered as he drew close and raised the reed like a whip. Cob ignored it. Erosei was a phantasm, and even if he could strike, Cob had never been afraid of pain.
When his menacing affect had no impact, Erosei tried to back up, but Cob was already too close. He grabbed the man by the face, and as Erosei squawked and yanked on his arm, he focused his will and—
—stared into the blue line of the horizon, ignoring the water as it foamed around the ship's prow. All his attention, all his rage and desire were fixed on the dark fleck slowly resolving from the waters: the island he and his quarry both sought.
The thread of smoke there told him Enkhaelen had made it first.
It felt like a slap in the face, and his hands twitched from the railing toward his paired swords. He had the sea on his side; it should have been him who raced faster, who closed the distance between their ships to board and cut that awful, presumptuous little monster to bloody ribbons.
But no, and now the day darkened, which pleased the Guardian but did not please him.
In the dark, he would not be able to see the look on that bastard's face when he killed him.
He closed his eyes, focusing on his last image of the quarry: pale near to hypothermic at the top of Howling Spire even with the Ravager's wings blazing at his back, pupils blown so wide that his eyes looked black, the sword of bone and ash trembling in his grip. So near to breaking, and yet he had sunk his claws into Erosei's shoulders and torn him from the rock, then soared away as Erosei tumbled down, down, down. It had taken him far too long to hit bottom.
The words had been the worst, though. 'I thought you'd understand revenge.'
Of course he did. Had he not earned this title by breaching Muria like his namesake and demanding their aid, their blades? Had he not brought justice down upon the blasted Altaerans who had taken everything?
He did not need the reminder. Nor did he care to sympathize. They were not the same.
As the distance shrank, the thread of smoke became a cord, then a column. He squinted, puzzled; it was Enkhaelen's little ship, which had skipped out of Erosei's watery grip like an ice-dancer every time he drew close. More sail than vessel, almost, and now the whole thing was burning.
His hands fisted on the swords' hilts, breath coming shallow as he tried to guess what it meant. Perhaps Enkhaelen planned to kill him and steal his ship, but he had countermeasures for that; he knew how water affected the fire-blooded freak and had already planned to anchor far off-shore, then take a rowboat in. He doubted Enkhaelen could manage to row back.
And the island itself was just a dot in the Lisalhan Sea. It had taken a tall stack of coins before Erosei's captain had agreed to this route, since most wise captains hugged the coastline lest they be sunk by the dwellers beneath the waves. This whole sea was cursed, and no place in it more so than this island.
The Seal of Water. The shattered remains of the Pillar of the Sea.
Enkhaelen had already opened the five landlocked Seals, and now his ship burned in a place where no ships dared come without a well-paid cause. In his pursuit, Erosei had seen no evidence of accomplices to Enkhaelen's crimes—only victims, like the climbing team Enkhaelen had hired then devoured along the way to Howling Spire's summit. He imagined that the ship's crew burned along with their vessel.
“Do you mean to die here?” he murmured to the wind. “For I would be pleased to oblige you.”
But he had to wonder—
Blinking, Cob halted, trying to make sense of the thin light that had taken the place of his seafaring vision. His feet and the cracked sands reminded him, and he pulled off the eye-guard and squinted fiercely against the glare from the salt.
“What?” he said, turning to the others, but they were not looking at him. He followed their attention southwest, to where something small and greyish wove drunkenly across the salt toward them, emitting short, pained cries.
“What is—“ he started again, but then he felt it: a small life pattering through the dust, familiar. “Rian!” he said, and broke from the column to intercept the goblin.
The others followed but his legs were longest and he felt no weariness. He reached Rian well in the lead and fell to one knee, laid the tectonic lever down and scooped the goblin close. Even from a distance he had sensed suffering, but seeing it now—the huge eyes bloodshot, skin abraded and peeling, dark hands and feet cracked from constant contact with the salt—was like a stab in the gut.
Rian knotted skinny fingers into his robe and clung, whimpering when Cob tugged at his harness to check the sunburn on his back. His entire scalp and what patches of skin were not covered by straps or scraps had gone a weird ruddy grey, and Cob felt the feverish heat even without touching. A glass bottle hung from the harness, empty.
“Rian! Oh Shadow, Rian!” cried Lark as she rushed up then half-collapsed against Cob in shock and relief. Her hand trembled as she reached to touch the goblin's cheek. A mewl, then Rian raised his head from Cob's chest and held an arm out for his surrogate mother.
Cob relinquished him to her, grimacing as she burst into tears. The creak of cart-wheels approached, and he turned to rummage through the packs in the cart for a cup. The water elemental in the keg raised a tendril in greeting as he lifted the lid, and he smiled wanly and dipped the cup.
“Gonna need some swaddling for him,” he told Fiora, who nodded and pulled down a pack.
Cautiously he approached the two again. The Shadow girl had the goblin cradled in her arms, tears still streaming down her cheeks though her mouth held a wavery smile, her back to the sun to give him some shade. Rian's fingers were locked in her robe-front, head nestled against her chest, and the half-blind adoration he turned on her was nothing short of childlike. It twinged Cob's heart, and he moved to add his shadow to hers, offering the cup.
“Sip slowly,” he said. “Don't wanna bring it back up.”
The goblin whined, then squirmed upright enough to take the cup. He looked exhausted. Cob could not fathom how he had gotten here, let alone found them.
Then he saw the silvery glint beneath the harness.
“Pike me,” he muttered, suddenly ill at ease. He found the cord around the goblin's neck and tugged it free, and there it was: the crystalline arrowhead.
Superstition screamed for him to throw it away. No matter how many times he lost it, it kept returning. The last time he'd seen it was when Lark shot it into Enkhaelen's back.
But Rian had come a long way with it—and it was his. A token of survival, even if that survival had in truth been the Guardian's work. With a sigh, he hooked the cord over his head and let it fall down under his tunic, to its proper place against his skin.
Sudden impressions hit him like a hammer between the eyes. Black basalt walls, magma, corpses, books in piles, skittering constructs, a portal-frame, a mirror that worked like a window, misshapen men and women in black, a maze of white wall
s and howling floors, a vicious scathing light—
And Enkhaelen. Myriad Enkhaelens—working, watching, laughing, furious, frustrated, afraid—
'I hope this will help,' whispered a half-familiar voice. 'I only wish I could do more.'
Rattled, Cob sat down in his tracks. The visions ebbed, but he felt them like a pulse on his skin, emanating from the arrowhead alongside its usual chill. Geraad, he recalled. The mind-mage I left with Rian.
His mouth quirked up. He didn't know how Geraad had come by this information, but he could already tell that it would be useful. Maybe enough to have hope. And it was good to learn that the mage had escaped, and was well.
“Cob, you all right?” said Dasira, and he looked up to find her frowning over him. They had all crowded around him and Lark and Rian in an impromptu rest-break, and he knew it would be a while before the goblin was in any condition to move.
“Yeah, fine,” he said, pushing to his feet. His mind was swarming; he wanted to take a long walk and examine the arrowhead, revisit Erosei's memory, mesh it all together. But he had obligations, so he lifted the tectonic lever and tried not to be bothered by the way everyone flinched.
Carefully he cracked through the salt with the chisel-end, then pushed down into the sand. It felt like a network, the grains compressed together but not yet cemented, still malleable—and deeply reassuring. After the vision, he'd been half-sure that the black water was lurking below. Focusing on his intent, he started deep and then lifted, bringing the tectonic lever up into an arc with a wave of sand following its tip until he forced it solid.
He opened his eyes to find a quarter-dome of glittering new rock above them, eight feet wide and three thick at its base. His friends stared at him, including the goblin, and he said defensively, “Ilshenrir's no good at makin' shade.”
Dasira sighed.
They rested in the concave of the wave for a while, Cob at one edge and Ilshenrir at the other, as Lark and Fiora and Arik coddled the goblin shamelessly and Dasira looked on with blank disinterest. As much as Cob would have liked to join in the reunion now that it was less tearful—the girls having cobbled together a salve from mashed oats and some residue scraped from the crossbow bolts Lark still carried—he couldn't figure out how to fit into that group. As the Guardian, his aura could aid the goblin from a distance, and he didn't have anything to say.
The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) Page 35