The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3)

by H. Anthe Davis

  The sweep of black robes. The scrutiny of a glacier-colored eye.

  “I do not have answers,” he said, staring at the chiaroscuro of the ceiling, “but the Risen Phoenix's priests are not sorcerers, not like the liars who wear the Sun Father's robes. They are infused by something beyond magic. Do you understand?”

  A silence passed. He did not know how long it lasted. His eyelids felt heavy; he might have fallen asleep. Then she said, “I know that you have abandoned your home, star-brother.”

  He gave a brittle laugh. “I seek the truth. The truth is my home.”

  “And you think to find it here, among these monsters?”

  “I think...” It was difficult to distill into words. For all that he was entranced by the Imperial Light, he was not a worshiper. He did not accept the presence of the Imperial Light and the absence of the Sun Father with blind faith, but tried to look beyond—and what he saw, he did not understand.

  “I think that this Light does not hurt me, shadow-sister. For now, that is all I require.”

  Another long look, then the woman exhaled through her teeth and gestured at his exposed stomach. “Cover yourself and cede your elemental bonds. You give me no reason to harm you, so I will simply remove you.”

  “And take me where? Back to the Father's lying sons?”

  “I have no obligation to them.”

  “Where, then?” A thought occurred, and he brightened and tried to sit up, tugging at his undershirt. “Gejara? Gernaaken perhaps? I have been learning the tongue...”

  “Into holding,” she said coldly. “Beyond that, we shall see.”

  Presh sighed, but nodded. He knew he had no choice. He could snap out a few lights and sever his companion from the Shadow Realm, but his elementals were beyond his reach: by the Archmagus' orders, he held them on a loose rein, and they would not follow him into buildings without orders. Nor could they pass through walls.

  Perhaps it was for the best. He would miss Mako and Voorkei, but when the priest Cortine had blessed him, he had felt a gaze upon him like a distant eye—not a Scryer's or a Psycher's presence but something more, something greater. He had tangled himself in the affairs of a god he did not follow, and now it knew him.

  The chamber dissolved into darkness. He felt hands on his forearms, drawing off his bangles; felt them plucking at his shirt fastidiously. When he woke, he would paw at walls that were not walls, too pliable, too alive, and would call out hoarsely for water, a visitor—anything.

  But for the moment, under the ministration of the shadows, he simply slept.

  *****

  Later, in her temporary office far beneath Bahlaer, Enforcer Ardent sorted through the mage's tools while batting away the occasional inquisitive eiyet. She did not want to think about his words. Dealing with Blaze Company, the city and its rulers was quite enough.

  Still, she was unnerved by his drunken babble. She tried to tell herself it was none of her business; the Temple of the Sun had no influence on the Kheri, and vice versa. Yet she had heard about this sort of suppression. The Astronomers' Heresy, they called it. And his allegations against the priesthood, his curious thoughts on the Imperial Light...

  For now, such questions would have to wait.

  *****

  Riftdawn, Cylanost 31st.

  The air was sharp and clear, the breath of the archers blooming white as they limbered up in the training yard. Captain Sarovy watched as their lieutenant, Sengith, walked the lines, speaking a few words to each man and looking over their bows, their kit. At the far end of the yard, straw bales were set up with painted cloth drapes, mimicking figures. On the benches across from Sarovy, the crossbowmen fidgeted, waiting their turn.

  “Do you ever miss the bow?” said Enlightened Messenger Cortine at his side.

  Sliding his gaze to the priest, Sarovy considered the question. He was not sure what Cortine saw when he looked at the yard with his milk-white eyes. Perhaps it did not matter. “I have a horse-bow, but yes. Sometimes.”

  “It is said that your people are born clutching the umbilicus like a bowstring.”

  “I doubt that.”

  A smile creased Cortine's mouth. “Yes, but the association remains.”

  Sarovy glanced to the line at Sengith's first call to loose. Arrows spattered their targets; he caught the Trivesteans flashing grins and sneers at each other, always internally competitive, while the other archers contained their envy. The two groups shot differently, Trivesteans with the thumb, the rest with their forefingers, but there were a few others affecting the Trivestean thumb-ring now. Perhaps trying out the technique.

  “I'm sure,” he said as the archers drew again. Yes, a few were trying with the thumb. He saw the muscles in a Wynd's arm quiver, unused to the draw style.

  “Loose!” called Sengith, and the arrows snapped to their targets.

  “You do not think your appointment to the lancers was peculiar? Perhaps an insult?” continued Cortine. He stood at parade rest, hands linked behind his back, the twisted cord of the worldly harness draped across his shoulders as neatly as if pinned there. Chill wind flicked the tips of his swept-back locks but did not touch his embroidered vestments.

  “It was not an insult,” said Sarovy. “I have seen success.”

  “Have you?”

  Sarovy did not bridle at his tone. His failures were no secret. “In the Jernizan campaign, yes, and along the coast here.”

  “But not within the city? No, I suppose not, as you do shelter our enemy.”

  As Sarovy opened his mouth, the silver earhook crackled to life. He heard Shield-Lieutenant Gellart's voice, thin and garbled, then Sergeant Rallant's, and made a mental note to wake Scryer Yrsian. The burden of maintaining the connection between distant earhooks taxed her, and he and Linciard had kept her awake too long last night with their debate on the need and utility of further wards, but Lieutenant Gellart was on a warehouse-clearing mission. She couldn't be allowed to sleep through that.

  Messenger Cortine was regarding him with that blank stare. “My apologies,” said Sarovy, “what was your question?”

  “The medic, captain. Or should I say the witch.”

  Sarovy glanced to the archers again, incapable of holding that gaze. It made him want to nod, to yield, to obey—to feel that hand on his brow again, the blessing of the Light infusing him to his core. Any glance at the priest gave an echo of that rapture, and it made his pragmatic heart shudder.

  He had experienced enough mindwashing to know when he was being controlled, but he could not remember wanting it like this.

  “Just a medic, Messenger,” he answered briskly. “She has shown no sign of heresy.”

  “No? Perhaps you are unaware. She does not treat your men with medicine, captain, but with the magics of her Dark goddess. Did you not wonder how their wounds mend so easily?”

  He already knew. But he had never heard of a medic proselytizing to the men, and after seeing them in action in the Crimson base-camp he had come to accept that it was not, by nature, heretical to use their services in support of the Army.

  “What would you have me do?” he said.

  “Dismiss her.”

  “And replace her with...?”

  “I can see to the injured.”

  Sarovy glanced sidelong to the priest, who had turned his blank gaze back to the archers. “I was not aware that you had training in medicine. I thought the Enlightened Messengers simply served as spiritual advisors.”

  “We do. That is what your men need, not Dark magic.”

  “You can stitch wounds? Mend flesh?”

  “The Risen Light speaks to me. I do as it bids.”

  “Yes, but does that involve actual healing?”

  “Captain, would you prefer that your men had whole bodies and Darkened souls, or bore the wounds they received in our service with purity and grace?”

  Are you trying to fox me? he wanted to say, but held his tongue. He had long wondered why the Crown Prince had banned priests from his a
rmy, but Cortine was not like the priests he had known in Trivestes, with their exhortations of hierarchy and law, their promises of clarity and guidance. Not like them at all. “Messenger, I need my men alive and whole.”

  “There are always more men, captain. Those who die in service to the Light will join it in all its glory; those who are maimed in its service should be sent to the Palace for their reward.”

  “And so you want me to dismiss our only medic, and replace her with nothing.”

  “I wish you to expunge the Darkness from your midst, for the sake of your company.”

  “No. Not now.”

  The priest rounded on him, blank eyes somehow piercing, and Sarovy became aware that he was not a small man, nor soft. The robe only made him seem so. “Do you harbor some sympathy for the Dark, captain? Do you wish it to shelter within the bodies of your men? Those who have already been tended by the witch should be sent to the Palace for cleansing, as should those who have visited the city's brothels. Our High Templar and Field Marshal demands that we erase the taint that the misguided Crown Prince allowed to fester in this army, and I am surprised that you—a proper devotee of the Light—have not already acted.”

  For a moment, Sarovy was stunned to silence. In his mind's eye he saw the company roster marked out in red and black: the many who had visited Medic Shuralla and the many more whom he could barely pry from the Velvet Sheath.

  “Messenger,” he said slowly, “you do realize that would mean all of my men.”

  “Not all of them, captain. Only those insufficiently devoted to the Light.”

  Which is all of them! “I can not possibly comply with that directive.”

  “Nevertheless, captain—“

  “At any given moment, half the company is in the piking brothel!” It was an exaggeration but it certainly felt true. “It is probably the only thing keeping them from killing each other out of stress and boredom, and that only barely! What would you suggest: that we pray our nights away? I've heard that you priests have no piking—“

  He stopped himself, barely, at the edge of true slander, but the priest's brows had gone up and the training yard was dead silent. “Yes, captain?” said the Messenger coolly. “No what?”

  “I— My apologies. These have been a trying few weeks. But it is not practical to expect my men, many of them foreigners, to conform to a priest's celibacy.“

  “It is essential for the cleansing of the ranks,” said Cortine. “Man is a fragile creature, captain: a cage of flesh around a shining soul. The more we steep ourselves in the stuff of Darkness, the more we drown our tiny light. The only way to feed that light is to join it with a greater one. To break open the cage and rise with the Phoenix, burning away all that would shackle us.

  “This witch, these women of the brothel, they would quench that light. All Light. They have no souls, only Darkness. You must remove your men from their influence immediately.”

  Sarovy opened his mouth but had no words. Linciard had confirmed that at least one of the prostitutes worked for the Shadow Cult, but he got the feeling Messenger Cortine wasn't talking about that. Nor did he remember hearing this bit of doctrine back in the Sapphire Army. “The prostitutes are...Dark puppets, you say?”

  “All women are,” confirmed Cortine. “They are born the same as men, but the Dark burrows into them as they flower, hollowing them out until they are mere vessels for its will. Their beauty is a lure, captain, meant to draw men into the Darkness they contain. We of the Temple take drastic measures to protect ourselves so that we can pull our weaker brethren from the trap.”

  He indicated his eyes, and then his groin. Sarovy recalled the eunuch rumors, but nothing he'd heard had prepared him for this kind of rhetoric. The greater implications were ridiculous: wives, relatives, colleagues—monsters?

  “We employ Imperial women,” he said. “The lagalaina specialists—”

  “They have been cleansed. Broken open to the Light and scoured so thoroughly that no taint can take root, then rekindled by the divine Phoenix itself. Blessed. All of your specialists are the Blessed, captain, and can no longer be tainted by the world.”

  Even if I couldn't drag them from the brothel with a team of draft-hogs? thought Sarovy, but he didn't want to argue this. He didn't want to hear it at all. And if he wasn't a receptive audience, there was no way his men would be. There would be mutiny.

  “My apologies, Messenger, but I must consider what is practical for the situation,” he said. “My men's souls can be cleansed when their lives are no longer in danger.”

  “I am disappointed, captain, but I suppose not surprised, as you've yet to cleanse your prisoners. How long will you keep those two in the basement?”

  Sarovy looked back to the training field, where the archers were making a show of not eavesdropping. He hadn't tried to hide his attempted assassins from the priest, but he'd hoped the topic wouldn't come up—not least because he still hadn't decided what to do with them. If they were part of a conspiracy, it meant taking on the city's government or the Shadow Cult directly. He did not have the manpower for that, and if General Rackmar sent his own troops...

  He saw again the pit of flames where the Shadowland had been.

  He was a soldier, yes. A dutiful follower. But what had been done that day was a crime.

  And if Beltras and Rynher were not a symptom of a Bahlaeran conspiracy? If they were just two men maddened by the loss of their comrades, taking out their anger on the best target?

  “I have not yet learned all I can from them,” he said.

  “Your mentalist has not dredged their minds? Or—ah yes, she is a woman.”

  The snide dismissal inflamed Sarovy. Scryer Mako had done more for Blaze Company than he could fully comprehend; the very presence of the earhook bespoke her worth. To hear her badmouthed by this—

  Calm yourself, Firkad. You cannot punch a priest.

  “She is not an Inquisitor,” he said tightly. “It is against the law for her to do so.”

  “The laws of mages and the laws of the Light are not the same, captain.”

  “Are you saying that Imperial law does not ban non-Inquisitors from memory-raking?”

  “We do as the Light wills.”

  Of course we do—when we know what that is! He was beginning to see the root of Rackmar's lax writ-giving. Perhaps the High Templar expected the Light to beam orders directly to his subordinates in the same way he apparently received them.

  He tried to breathe evenly, but found he was doing so through his teeth. He had been wanting to have a sit-down discussion with Messenger Cortine but his busy schedule had previously prevented it. Now he wished this was happening in his office so that his men would not have to see him wroth.

  “I will not command her to attempt a task beyond her ability,” he said tightly. “The Field Marshal may send me an Inquisitor if he wishes this resolved in that manner. Otherwise, I deal with these men my way.”

  “And the city?”

  “That is my task.”

  “You are meant to control it, captain, not mollify it.”

  “Am I? My orders, insomuch as I have been given any, are to occupy this garrison and sit on my hands. I have no goal beyond that which I set for myself, and if you come bearing any papers, by all means reveal them to me. I would be grateful to have a writ of purpose, a seal of authority, anything to tell me what the Field Marshal wants.”

  Cortine favored him with a blind smile. “Why, captain, I am your purpose.”

  “The Bahlaerans will not accept that. I have done all I can to forward the priorities of the Imperial Light, but anything else requires the Field Marshal's support.”

  “You have not yet convinced him of your worth.”

  What does he want? he almost screamed. Shall I storm the council house, execute them all and declare Bahlaer under Imperial rule? Shall I try to physically oust the Shadow Cult and become a blasted martyr?

  It was just not feasible. The ruengriin were worth five to ten men each
, and the city's population had been whittled down to mostly women, children and the elderly, but he was not an idiot. Witch-magic harmed specialists; the Shadow Cult manipulated darkness; non-Imperial mages and other heretic priests could be waiting anywhere; and even a child could hold a knife. Pikes, the old Cray woman had nearly gotten him. It was like standing in a hayloft with a sputtering torch, watching sparks drift to the ground.

  The earhook crackled again, making him twitch. He caught Rallant's voice but no words.

  “I apologize, Messenger, but I have work to do,” he said, turning toward the door.

  Cortine grabbed his wrist.

  A hammer of presence, of glory, caught him between the eyes, and he crumpled to one knee. Flowers of light bloomed before him, erasing the garrison wall. He could not breathe, could not think—could only feel the pressure of the Light like a huge hand around his chest, squeezing, kneading him into a shape of its choosing. No lungs, no throat, no eyes, no hands. No individuality. No will.

  Faces—everywhere a myriad of masks, some he recognized though did not know, some he had drawn. A falling sensation—no, submerging, only barely heavier than the glossy substance around him. A radiance below, like a cinder at the center of the world...

  Something kicked in his chest, and he gasped a ragged lungful of air. A band of hot iron left his wrist, and as he toppled forward he realized it had been Cortine's fingers. He caught himself before he could face-plant into the doorstep, and for a moment he just stayed there on all fours, panting, staring at his winged-light pendant as it ticked back and forth on its chain.

  “Interesting,” said Cortine.

  The door swung open—inward, fortunately—and he looked up to see Houndmaster Vrallek lurch back in surprise. The ugly ruengriin's gaze went from Sarovy to the priest, then past them to the silent crowd of archers.

  Forcing himself up, Sarovy said, “Yes, Houndmaster-Lieutenant?” His legs felt like jelly.